Wired for Mystery: The Obscure Genius of Nikola Tesla

Step into the charged world of Nikola Tesla — the brilliant mind who dreamed of free energy, wireless power, and secrets the world wasn’t ready for. In this episode of Obscuracast, we dive into the life, death, and conspiracies surrounding Tesla’s lost inventions, government seizures, and his legacy as history’s most mysterious genius.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:54

What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Obscuracast. Today we're on episode 10. It's kind of crazy that we've already had 10 episodes of this podcast. We we started not really knowing what we're doing. Now we're getting into some really nitty-gritty type shits. Um, as always, we have myself uh as well as Dan, my co-host. How are you doing this evening, sir? Doing good, man. How are you? I'm doing all right. I know that we have done some episodes on a lot of groups, a lot of sort of wide-range topics. Today we're sort of focusing on one person, and it's not, you know, a person that is probably unknown to a lot of you. You've at least heard the name. I know you've heard the car brand before because it's world-renowned at this point. Today we're talking about a man by the name of Nikola Tesla. Um we wanted to get into a little bit more of like a prolific figure rather than, I guess, a group of people, so we can sort of center on, you know, one of the defining, I would say probably one of the defining minds of our time. Wouldn't you agree, brother?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yeah, and completely underrated, like does not get the credit that he deserves at all. And we'll get into that as the episode goes on. But yeah, I mean, we need we should credit most of our most of the things we use and do today are because of him.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I think it goes without saying, too, that like he's sort of in a league of his own. You talk about prolific minds, you do obviously have your Albert Einstein's, you have, you know, your Copernicus's, you have your Plato's, your Socrates, your Aristotle's. He needs to be in that same conversation, at least as far as I'm concerned. It's not one of those things where you're, you know, the word prolific, you don't really throw it around. It's just sort of moniker to people, I think, especially in in society as human beings. You can't really throw it around willy-nilly. There needs to be sort of a standard. And like you said, he is sort of responsible. And like I, you know, like as Dan said, we're gonna get into why he was responsible for a lot of the things that are even in play today. He, you know, he was uh he was an inventor, basically, it was his you know, day-to-day job, but it goes so much deeper than that as far as what he was able to invent and what we still use is sort of groundwork and framework and infrastructure that we still use, uh, even in everyday life. So the main thing that he was known for for the most part, just to sort of give it a general, you know, a general scope, was one of the big things he was responsible for or advocated for was free energy. Um and the question I wanted to pose to you, dude, was I have my own answer. I want to hear what you think about it, and then I'll give you my answer because I think they're gonna probably align. Uh, if you could power the entire world for free, do you think that would be allowed? And do you think you would be able to do it without consequence? Tell me what your feelings are on that.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

No, because uh that's what he tried doing, and they wouldn't let him. Absolutely not, because it's power. Spiritly and literally. I was gonna say quite literally, right? And they're they're gonna charge people for it. You know how much goddamn money? You know, my dad always used to yell at me, turn off the lights when you're not downstairs, you know, blah blah blah, turn everything off. And I always used to be like, Well, like, why do you get so pissed? Now I'm yelling at my daughter, turn the light off before she leaves her room.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah, we become in our adult lives. I suffer from the same thing as I suffer from like I everything has to be off when I leave my apartment. Humidifier, fans, lights, everything has to be turned off, completely turned off. Because it saves you so much money. Not to get too much off on a tangent as far as like how much money it costs, but at the same time, it's it's worth noting because and we'll get into all this. I just think it's interesting that I I think we align on the same tip as far as would you be able to or would they let you? No, because it's a cash grab, it's a way to make money, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah, yeah. Do you be taking money out of you know, we wouldn't have first energy, we wouldn't have any of the energy companies that we have now.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Um, and we'll get into all of the stuff with him and Edison and all that stuff's coming down the pike. But um, so what I wanted to do was sort of take the myth of what Tesla is, and then sort of him being just a you know very gifted human being that lived in lived in society, right? So Tesla, if you guys are have not been living under a rock, if you have been living under a rock and never heard of the Tesla Motor Company that was founded by Elon Musk, that's where Tesla comes from. He was also known for his love of electricity. It was kind of on the same tip, sort of took what Benjamin Franklin was all about with electricity and extrapolated it even farther. A lot of people with him as the myth side of things considered him a mad scientist, somebody that was sort of on the crazy or eccentric part of the spectrum. But like I said, a lot of what he sort of implemented back in his day, we still use. Like a perfect example that I saw or know about was our our general power grid. Not just the power grid of the United States, but the framework for power grids all over the world. Like I said, he had a huge, huge Jones and fascination with electricity, how it worked, the type of power you could harness from it, what it was able to do from an application standpoint, all that kind of stuff. And like I said, we're gonna get into all that stuff and and sort of flesh it out um throughout his life up until his, you know, his obvious death. Um, and and that's shrouded in conspiracy theories and and all sorts of crazy stuff. Um, but he was born in 1856. He was born in um what is now modern day Croatia, and interestingly enough, most people would have would appropriate and sort of throw the feather in the cap to Thomas Edison for all of his work with electricity and lighting the world and all that kind of stuff. And we're gonna get into that whole ordeal with him and Edison and all that kind of stuff. It's gonna be an interesting conversation. So as far as him being the eccentric person and just a modern day human being like an Albert Einstein or anything like that, where do you think you draw the line between what is myth and what is fiction for you? Like or what is uh what is factual and not false or or mythic? What where do you fall on that conversation? Like, where do you draw the line?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

With with Tesla?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

I don't know. I mean, the part of the problem is that the guy was pretty closed off. He didn't care about money or he didn't even give a damn about recognition, quite frankly. He just wanted a better humanity, so he had an assistant, I know, that was with him for a while. And a lot of the stuff, other than a few pictures that we have, right, of like him getting touched by the bolt of lightning or whatever, that's pretty profound. Other than a few pictures and stuff, it's kind of like, you know, unless Edison or his assistant or whatever said it, it was like there's a lot of hearsay. But you also don't know because he just wasn't a very braggadocious person.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

He was sort of a hermit in the sense, you know, he was sort of a hermit in very much in the sense of not so much that he was closed off from the world, but I remember seeing something in the documentary and some of the research that I know about with him. He was closed off in the sense that he was purely trying to, like you said, sort of push the narrative forward as trying to make us a better society, more efficient, less, less hung up on the fact that we need to pay for our energy. It should be useful to everybody. Everybody should partake in it because it is a for more for for lack of a better word or better term, it's a renewable resource. It's not something that's finite. It's something that you can use over and over and over again. It's to what I understand from his point of view is basically infinite. It's like air. Right. Like you don't think about breathing oxygen, it just sort of happens. There's that process of carbon dioxide into oxygen and all that kind of stuff. So he essentially, from his point of view, in you can feel free to disagree or agree. That's basically what he was thinking of is that it was something that just is around us and it's it's it's ready for the taking and it's renewable to the point where it's you can keep using it and using it and using it and using it, that type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

It should be a birthright, it shouldn't be owned by anybody.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Right, because it's something that happens in nature, it's not necessarily something you have to mass produce or anything like that on that kind of a scale. Right, right. But before we get too far down the rabbit hole, I did want to make sure that you guys knew that if you haven't listened to the podcast before, we always upload clips and interesting points of view touring the podcast. And we mo we mostly put it to two channels. We're trying to get more social media. But if you guys are interested in seeing like clips and like tweets from us and stuff that we retweet on X and uh and Instagram, it's just obscurecast, it's just the name of the podcast. It's so it's an at symbol at obscurecast. If you guys want to see uh some interesting clips and stuff, and and we might post pictures and stuff too, or points of view and things like that. So if you guys want to follow those social media handles, just sort of stay up with the podcast and the clips and stuff like that. If you want to sort of digest a smaller version of the podcast or the interesting clips that we put out, um, that's where you can do it. So um wanted to make sure we made that plug before we get too far down the rabbit hole and too far into the conversation. So, Dan, from your perspective, I know we sort of touched on the myth and the man as far as who he was from both sides of that perspective. Do you think he was more of a scientist? Do you think he was more of a mystic that was able to really wow people like a Houdini type of thing? Where where do you sort of stand like that? Do you think he played both sides of that? Do you think he was sort of had to be a showman in order to make it palatable and and sort of digestible for people that he was doing these demonstrations in front of without getting too scientific? How do you how do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I mean, he was definitely a showman, but like he wasn't a showman, like he was really bad at marketing, right? You know, like he he he put on these great shows for people, these demonstrations, obviously, but you know, probably I think he's probably somewhere more in the middle lake, because if you're a showman, I mean you're constantly, you know, putting yourself in back then newspaper articles and you know, whatever radio and all that stuff, but you know, he really didn't know Edison is a different story, which is why a lot of times, you know, Edison got a lot of credit for things that Edison didn't even do. It was Tesla and he stole stuff from Tesla. So that's why, you know, growing up in school, correct me if I as far as I remember growing up in school learning about, you know, the invention of electric of you know, the founder of electricity, Edison and all that stuff, like all the credit was given to Edison. I didn't hear about Tesla probably I think it was after high school by somebody other than my father talking about Tesla.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Well he was sort of used as a sc he was sort of used as like a a platform to grab ideas from, it seems like. Like there's a like I always quote like Family Guy and stuff like that. I told you there was a great Family Guy bit about Tesla and Edison and the and the war of currents, which we're gonna get into, which is a really interesting discussion. But to make my point is sort of what you're talking about, the bit goes something like this. It's not verbatim, so like I said, don't don't hold me to it for exact quote, but essentially crucify you. Right, exactly. So the bit goes something like this. So it's like they're sitting in like a patent meeting for the court or something like that, figuring out who's gonna be the father of electricity and who's gonna have the invention that powers the world and all this stuff. So they're like, oh well, Thomas Edison, you've you've won the fact that we're gonna light use your incandescent light bulb or the light bulb that you manufactured and invented to light the world in Tesla, we're gonna use yours in the back of Frankenstein movies. So like it's it's kind of like a it's it's kind of like a a weird dig, but at the same time, it makes the exact point that we're talking about is that like Edison was given all this credit for doing all this amazing stuff when really it was Tesla that came up with not only the better version of what Edison was talking about, but you could literally put it to anything and it was free and all this kind of stuff. And Tesla was the other side of the argument where they were trying to harness it for money and give you a bill every month to pay for it, and it was only available and you know, to the people that could afford it and all this stuff. So not only wasn't he an advocate for the invention, it seems like, but he was an advocate for everybody should have this. It's a renewable resource, it's something that you can extrapolate to all different sides or all different types of applications. You can do it to homeownership, you can do it to construction, you can do all this stuff, and electricity itself, we still use it today as a viable resource in order to do a lot of the things that we do even in, you know, as we're adults. Like this is stuff he came back when came up with in like the 1900s, dude, and we're still using it as infrastructure. It's still being used today. It's insane.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

And you look at like grounding, right? People do they sleep with like grounding sheets, and you know, you can put like ground in your garden. You don't have to use any pesticides, you just stick the rods in in the ground in your garden, and I forget the whole the whole process, but that's it completely repels the bad insects from eating your plants.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Well, that was the thing too, is that like there was uh there was there was inventions that he had and toys that he had. I saw in the documentary they talked about it, that would literally run off insects to power whatever he was inventing. It's it's really cool stuff. But like I said, we're gonna get into the war of the currents and all that stuff with Edison too. Just to round out sort of like the myth, the legend, the man, that kind of thing. Do you think he's gonna be remembered for what he was building? Like what he was actually responsible for, or what he almost did? Like, do you think he'll just be, like I said, he's sort of like the poster boy for like, hey, you stole my idea type shit? Like, do you think he's gonna be remembered for that, or what he actually tried to put into existence, that type of thing? Where do you where do you think that he's gonna land or where he has landed?

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Where he has landed is the ladder is the one where he's kind of like, you know, the poster boy for hey, you stole my shit. But I think I think probably within the next a hundred years, maybe less, I think he'll start to really get the credit that he deserves, you know, for what he built and what he was, you know, I know it in it's in italics here. It says um what he almost did. I mean he actually there's things that people don't think he did that I'm convinced he did do it. Um we can get into that later. But I I think I think he proved a hell of a lot more people wrong than he gets credit for. But again, back then it he didn't have the technology, so it's hard.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Well it was all hearsay too. This is before the internet and all that kind of stuff where it was if somebody said something, you sort of had to take their word. There wasn't documented proof other than on paper, and you know, forgery happens and all that kind of stuff, but that's neither here nor there. What I do want to get in is we sort of fast forward, right? Because we said he was an assistant of Edison, which is an interesting dynamic in the first place, but then we said we were going to talk about the war of the currents. So essentially it was a Tesla versus Edison. It's kind of like your Mike Tyson versus Evander Holyfield type of thing. This is sort of like the the setup for how prolific these two guys were in their realm of understanding and their inventions and that kind of thing and their patents and all that stuff. Tesla was responsible for the AC current, which AC is alternating current, and then direct current is the DC versions. Uh Tesla was the AC version, and then uh Thomas Edison was the DC version, which actually brings me to a really cool point. And a lot of you might not know this. Have anybody ever heard of the band ACDC? That's where AC DC got their name from. It's from the alternating current and the direct current. Two conflicting ideals and two conflicting uh types of power and and energy in the universe. That's where ACDC got their name from. Just a little side tip for you in case nobody knew that. It's one of my favorite bands, so I felt I had to bring it up. So then we fast forward to what we were talking about as far as Edison sort of taking his ideas and sort of run with thing and trying to sort of smear his name and take all the credit for himself type of thing. What do you think about the stuff? So as Tesla did demonstrations, Edison also did demonstrations as well to try to disprove what Tesla was coming up with and what he was for. And one of the wild things, one of the wild facts about Edison during this smear campaign was that he was electrocuting animals to prove that AC was dangerous versus direct current. There was also the stuff about the fact that West or Westinghouse, one of the big energy companies back in the day, was backing Tesla and the Niagara Falls thing. So basically the whole War of the Currents thing sort of centered around the fact that Niagara Falls is, from a power standpoint, one of the biggest, you know, power entities as far as water's concerned in the world. It's a natural wonder. It's one of those things that's just if you sort of think about it, it's kind of mind-boggling to think about how big Niagara Falls actually is if you've never been there and what it's responsible for. Do you think that having him being backed by Westinghouse, no matter what Edison was doing in his life as far as you know, getting backing and that thing kind of thing, do you think like a major corporation or a major energy company backing Tesla was sort of like a knife in the side to Edison? As well as the the smear campaign and the and trying to like disprove or discredit what he was talking about. W where do you stand on that? Like, do you think that was a do you think that was a focal point and what he was trying to do to discredit Tesla and all that kind of stuff? How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah, I mean, he got mad that Tesla that he got mad that you know Tesla didn't stay his apprentice and agree with him on certain things. They obviously argued about what's a better power source, and Edison thought he was crazy for this idea. Um you know, which if you think about it, why is it so I don't understand what was so hard to comprehend that electricity is naturally occurring because it's here during thunderstorms. Like you see it. So I don't understand what the the argument was on that.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

It's like the argument against it is what you mean.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Yeah, like what like obviously there's not a machine up in the sky creating it, so it's coming from the earth somehow, but whatever. You know, I think and again, I think Edison ha his ego was so big i there was just it got in the way.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Do you think there was a driving force behind the ego, or do you think that was just him sort of seeing an opportunity and seizing it?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

I think money and success and power. I mean, you gotta think. Edison was hanging out with like Rockefeller and you know, the Vanderbilts and Westinghouse. Like he was hanging out with all those guys, and yeah, Tesla got backing from Westinghouse, but Westinghouse also, you know, fucks him over in the end. So we'll talk about that later. But you know, I I don't know. I I think I think Edison loved the popularity, the money, and the power, and Tesla could have given two shits about any of that stuff. The only thing he gave a fuck about was the actual power of electricity. That's all he he cared about in bettering humanity, like we said before. So, you know, obviously having a company like Westinghouse back him was huge because he needed somebody to back him. Uh he wouldn't have been able to do it without a Westinghouse. So, you know, the unfortunate thing is once he proved it, then they went away because he said, you know, there's no way to monitor it. So yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

I think also just to piggyback off that and make a point, we're also talking about a foreigner. We're talking about somebody that wasn't a let's quote native to America, how relative that is. He wasn't uh, you know, he's Edison was probably afforded a lot of luxuries that Tesla wasn't afforded just because of the sheer fact that he was foreign. Let's just call it what it is. Let's just call it what it is.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Well, and you gotta think, you know, majority of this stuff happened around what time? Uh you know, beginning nineteen.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

So you're talking about like world wars? Yeah, you're talking about a time when European I mean, depending on the European European country you're talking about, it could get really dicey. So I I completely understand that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Mm-hmm. I think a lot of the newspapers and media got behind Addison, number one, because he probably had his pockets in the in them, you know, deep in their pockets, but also because of that narrative of he was the American. Yeah. So I agree with you on that one hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

So I guess the real question is if we're talking about this good versus evil well, I was gonna say good versus evil, that's gonna be the question. And the Tesla Edison debate, do you think it's fair to call Edison a villain in the argument? Do you think it was with malicious intent, or do you think, like I said, do you think he just seized an opportunity when it presented itself? Do you think there was a malicious intent beside but like do you think there was a malicious intent behind what he was doing?

SPEAKER_01 21:34

I mean, yes. The short answer is yes. I mean, from the reading that I've done on on Edison, you know, times were very different back then. All these these guys that had the this money back in this, you know, era they were ruthless. You know, they didn't care about their workers, they didn't care who they hurt to get to power. Not that there's that much difference today. It was just a lot easier to do it and not feel guilty about it because, you know, now everybody's a TMZ reporter and will get you on camera doing it or record you. Back then there were no frickin' rules, so you could treat somebody like a dog and nobody's gonna hear about it unless you do it at a mass public, you know, gathering. So yeah, I do think that he did did it maliciously, but I also think that just corporate business owner business owners were kind of more like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yeah, I I would tend to agree with you. I don't think if we're talking about malicious like to hurt him, I don't know if I believe that. I think that power and fame and money and monetary value is a huge deterrent from you. For some people, if it if it happens to coincide with your psyche and how you sort of think, a lot of people are vulnerable to that. I don't consider myself somebody vulnerable to me handing me a bunch of money and fucking somebody over. I just don't think that's morally right. But at the same time, we have to think about the stigma that we were talking about earlier. He was a foreigner, somebody that was in the country trying to do things that were revolutionary and powers that be didn't necessarily like what he was doing because they felt that they could market it. They felt like they had a figurehead, I guess, in Edison and sort of backed him and did what they could to sort of push him forward. I think, I honestly think, genuinely in my heart and my in my mind, that Tesla got sort of shafted. I I think that he, like you said at the very beginning of the episode, I don't think he gets the credit that he deserves. Having done the research that I've done, as well as watching the documentary that I watched, uh, he had something like 700 patents or so when he died. I mean, like, it was to the point where this guy was I think it was more this guy devoted his entire being and life and in essence to pushing society forward and making things affordable. And like I said, powers that be don't like that. There's a lot of entities, there's a lot of corporations, there's a lot of partnerships that wouldn't have happened if these energy companies and Edison wouldn't have got what he got. You're talking about a guy that literally was gonna strip away the entire corporate fabric and essence of what energy is. Like it wouldn't, it would be nowhere the same. It would be completely different, and for better or for worse, we're not gonna be able to see that outcome. It sort of is what it is at this point. That's sort of where I stand. And I think it's for all intents and purposes and for all intents of like terminology, it's kind of a shame.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, it is. It is.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

And it's always tough when people don't get the credit that they deserve. It's always really tough, especially when there's like captivating evidence that they should have. Go ahead and say, I didn't mean to cut you off.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

No, you're good. He's not the only one. I mean, you know, uh now they're finally allowing it to happen. I don't know why now all of a sudden they're doing it, but companies are starting to back it and get behind it. Well, there was a guy, I think, in the eighties or nineties, that came up with the a car that was purely just run on water, and he was more or less killed off. He conveniently had a heart attack, like as soon as he got the patent for it.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

But when something that we'll get into later.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yes, yes, we will. Um or or you know, how many people I'm sure you've heard this, especially with stuff like car engines and and and exactly what we're talking about with Tesla, companies will buy people's patents and shelf them.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah. And it's not just and it's not even just patent. We're not even talking about stuff you invent or patents in general. It happens in the music industry, it happens with public image, it happens with everything.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

And some people said, it's a shame that some people will go to these lengths. And I'm not, you know what I mean? I don't mean to bury I don't marry mean to bury anybody, but at the same time, I mean, if you're gonna take credit, it's kind of like it's it's basically pla it's not basically, it is, it's plagiarism.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

100%.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

And it's unfortunate that he was so innovative, and it seems like all of his stuff is basically, you know, we're gonna rip his name off, put some put some white out over it, and we're gonna slap a label of somebody else. It's it's kind of it it really is a shame. Yeah. Like you have to you have to ask the question is why couldn't they coexist? But at the same time, we're talking about a corporate entity, we're talking about something that's literally in use today, as far as like I said, if tender if Tesla would have got what he wanted, there's a whole lot of people that would be out of jobs, a lot of companies wouldn't have been formed, and all this stuff. And it's to think about something like energy and power and stuff that we pay for, to think about it to be free, think how much of a burden it would take off people.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Yeah. Yeah, it's uh to it and again, history is written by the victors, right? So that's another reason why you probably haven't you don't hear too much about Tesla until you get older and you really find out about it, is because Edison technically won. So he writes the history book. Have you looked into like what exactly took place in Niagara Falls?

SPEAKER_00 27:09

No, I know that he was I I know I don't know a lot about it.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

They touched on it at the documentary I watched, but no, give me s give me give me Yeah, so Niagara Falls for decades and years had their big dream was using Niagara Falls uh, you know, as renewable energy. It's one of the largest natural waterfalls in the world, and uh they wanted to use that that natural energy. So in eighteen eighty-six the Niagara Falls Power Company, later the Niagara Falls Power Project was formed to find a way to harness the falls. They wanted to use the immense kinetic energy of the falling water to generate electricity for the nearby city of Buffalo, New York, about twenty-six miles away. Here's the thing, okay? DC is very you can't power it very far. Right, it runs out.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

I think they said about a mile or so or a quarter mile or something like that. It was something within a mile.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah, so you can't do anything large scale. A C could easily be transformed to higher voltages for long distance transmission and then you know step down again for safe use, which was a huge deal back then. So this was a phenomenal opportunity, not just to test the distance with the 26 miles, but also the power of a whole city, right? So many world famous inventors actually submitted proposals, including Edison Tesla, Westinghouse, and Lord Kelvin, who chaired the selection committee. The challenge was clear how to efficiently generate and transmit electricity over such a long distance, something no one had done before. Okay, so Tesla's solution was the AC power system. Tesla had already invented the polyphase AC system, a design that used multiple alternating currents out of phase with each other to produce a rotating magnetic field in electric motors. This was the key. His system allowed efficient generation using hydraulic hydroelectric turbines, long distance transmission of power using high voltage AC lines, easy conversion of voltage levels using transformers. Tesla's patents for AC motors, transformers, and power systems were acquired by George Westinghouse, who then partnered with him to bring AC power to Niagara Falls. So Tesla wouldn't have been able to do this without George.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Wouldn't have been able to do it.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Building the Niagara Falls power plant construction began in 1893 by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Key features water from the Niagara River was diverted into large underground tunnels, which are called four bays, that led to turbines. These turbines turned alternators, early AC generators designed by Tesla. Each generator produced 5,000 horsepower, about 3.7 megawatts. The generated power was transmitted 26 miles to Buffalo, making it the longest high voltage transmission in the world at the time. Tesla designed the system to produce three-phase AC power, a revolutionary concept that became the standard for global power transmission and is still used today. And then the breakthrough moment was in 1895 to 1896. On November 16th, 1896, electricity generated from Niagara Falls powered the city of Buffalo for the first time. The success of the project proved the superiority of AC power over DC and marked the beginning of the modern electric age. The Adams Power Plant, as it was called, became a model for all future hydroelectric projects. Tesla's Niagara Falls system demonstrated that renewable energy could power entire cities, established AC power as a global standard, defeating Edison's DC system, paved the way for mass electric electrification. Factories, homes, and cities across the world began adopting AC systems, inspired future hydroelectric projects like the Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Yeah. Sounds pretty revolutionary to me.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Yes. And you like don't hear about that.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah. And it sounds like something it's not only revolutionary, but the same thing. In the same breath, it's it's something that would drastically improve things. It's it's not only something that nobody had thought of, but it's also something that, hey, he thought of this and it's gonna better mankind. It's gonna make things easier. Yep. It's wild. I like it that we really get to the point where like this this this man was trying to literally change the world. And it's not using that lightly, it's what he was literally trying to do and attempting at. But I also wanted to get, I know we sort of touched on the fact that he was sort of a mystic and somebody that was sort of a showman and that kind of thing. So he was really, really well known for public experiments and public demonstrations of what he was able to do with electricity and power and that kind of thing. There there's you know rumors and and testimony of him lighting lamps from across the room and wireless energy and radio towers and stuff that we use, you know, like cell phone application and things like that. He was responsible for all that back in the day, and it's still, like I said, infrastructure that we use today. I know we had a huge, huge, huge, huge obsession with vibration and resonance and earth and how the earth actually produced power in a natural state. We've sort of talked about in previous episodes, and I want to touch on this too, about like how the earth has a natural frequency. I know you have a pretty big Jones for that kind of stuff. So talk to me a little bit about like what the resonance thing and the natural frequency, because I'm I'm sure your dad knew a lot about it as far as what that actual natural frequency was responsible for and that kind of thing. You're muted, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Thank you. Dad was uh dad was a lot more knowledgeable about that stuff than me. I honestly don't I don't even want to go even try to like tackle that.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Now your dad had a special way of explaining shit to make it palatable and digestible.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Yeah, he did, and he also used he could actually literally do like visual stuff to to make you understand it. I just I remember him showing me and I was like amazed, but you know, we never got a chance to we were supposed to, him and I actually were we were going to build a Tesla coil and put it in the backyard, but we never ended up doing it. Life got in the way.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

But yeah, so I know I I know we also talked, I mean, the earth has a natural frequency, and I don't think anybody can deny that. Everything sort of is in rhythm. So I think that's really interesting. The fact that he was able to sort of find that out and then use the natural, you know, energy of the earth to create a power source. It's pretty crazy if you really think about it, being able to harness a natural resource and make something that important as well as applicable. Not only is it something that's important, that's a revolutionary discovery, but he basically tried to put it towards anything. It was it was an it was a one size fits all for numerous applications. I think that's what's really revolutionary about it is not the fact that he found it, but the way he was able to sort of put it towards pretty much anything you could possibly think of. I think that's a really cool application of it. Um another big thing he was noted for was the Warden Cliff Tower. This is a really interesting one that I I want to hear your thoughts about, because like we were talking about, it had huge applications toward wireless power. Now, if you think about Wi-Fi these days being a tech guy, wireless connectivity has become the standard. Nobody wants a cord anymore. Nobody wants to have to broadcast things with cord. It just makes things messy and all that kind of stuff. And he was sort of a pioneer, if not the pioneer, if not the guy, to come up with that wireless power source and not only a wireless power source, but something that was again applicable to everywhere in the world, not just in the United States and and us as a society as Americans. So I want to know how you feel about that. Sort of my like, if you can take something like that and it literally becomes a standard, that's what you should be remembered for, in my personal opinion. I don't think he's necessarily I don't think he's not remembered for it, but it's not, it doesn't get the credit that he deserves. So I want to hear your thoughts on something like that. That's literally something that we've adopted as a standard.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Yeah. So basically you're talking about the tower.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Yeah, correct.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Exactly. The Warrencliffe Tower. Okay. So Warrencliffe Tower, what happened was is um JP Morgan, he funded the majority of that project. Um, and it was him and a few other investors, and when Tesla he proved he could do it. Um, it's not that they they didn't tear the tower down and stop funding him because he couldn't do it. He did it, proved that he could do it, it was very successful. JP Morgan was upset. They wanted a way to hook a monitor up to it to charge people for it. And Tesla said, you know, charge people this, this is free for everybody to use. And that's when they pulled funding. There's actually a quote from JP Morgan famously saying, If anyone can draw on the power, where do we put the meter? You know. Again, greed, power, not electrical power, but the other kind of power, human power, in ego, got in the way of greatness. Which is some which is like it's crazy because I'm sure they could have done some type of monetization if they really wanted to. Mm-hmm. 100%. So I don't understand why they just pull the whole thing, you know, because especially back then, they they had so easy, you know, to lie to the people. Not that I'm condoning lying. I'm not condoning lying at all, but our government and politicians and big corporations and pharma lie to us every day. So I don't understand why with this they couldn't just lie. That's why, like, if you look this up, even using like ChatGPT, it says that Edison didn't play a role in why they took the tower down. I don't believe that. Yeah, I think that's a little far-fetched for me. I think it's absolute.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

I don't think he I let no let me deter that a little bit. I don't think he had direct, I don't think he had direct uh swear influence over.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Edison supported it and probably nudged him a little, like he he's be he's gonna become the poster boy in the face of electricity and power across the world.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Yeah, so I don't agree that Edison had nothing to do with that tower being taken down.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Um if he didn't have anything to do it, he was sort of I I would imagine that he was just sort of like, hey, this is moving in the right direction. I'm not gonna say anything. Like sure as hell didn't you know what I mean? Like he didn't do the other side of it where he was like, Oh yeah, I you know, this dude originally came up with it, we can share it. There definitely wasn't any of that going on for sure. Um But the there since you brought up a quote from uh since you brought up that quote from JP Morgan, I wanted to sort of pose another quote to you. So, like, if if you want to find the secrets of the universe, would you you think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration? So, like we talked uh we talked on another episode, I think it was one of our first episodes, if not the first episode, where we're talking about sort of like laws of the universe and like metaphysics and stuff like that. Yeah. That seems very metaphysical. It's not something that is necessarily tangible where we can go somewhere and look at it. You'd have to have some sort of instrument, some sort of process for looking at those three types of energy, right? He was able to, Tesla being him, he was able to sort of show that to you. That's where I think the re the whole revolutionary and like the the genius of what he was able to sort of present. Not only could he show it to you, but he could make it feasible. I think that's the crazy thing about what he actually did and what he was about, is that he wasn't just about, hey, this is gonna work. Here's an example. Yes. You know what I mean? Like that you like that's the coolest thing I think about him is that he was not like we talk about the showman, and showman sort of gets a bad moniker being like, this isn't really what it seems. I'm just showing you something that looks pretty, that kind of thing. It's actually a piece of shit, right? Like a little facade. Yeah, it's a it's an illusion, it's a facade, it's a fugazi Fugazi, whatever you want to call it. Fugazi, Fugazi. Right, exactly. It's a wazi, it's a woozy. Wolf Wall Street quote. But yeah, I mean, that that sort of is his like if you wanted to write him down to a sentence, he was a dude that was showing you things that exist in nature that can help us out as a humanity. And he wasn't looking for any clout, he wasn't looking for any money necessarily. Everybody needs stuff to survive, whether it's monetarily or anything, but that wasn't what he was after. That wasn't his ML.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Absolutely. And another another thing in July through September in 1917, the tower was demolished by the Smiley Steel Company. Demolition was done so the property ownerslash creditors could sell the steel and other scrap to recoup debts. The site had been foreclosed on after Tesla defaulted on mortgages, in short, dismantled for scrap to satisfy the creditors, not as a personal act by Edison. Contemporary rumors during World War I claimed the US government ordered the tower destroyed because it might be used by German spies or as a landmark for submarines. Those rumors were widely reported at the time, but are not supported as the primary cause in the document or in the financial slash foreclosure explanation is the best documented documented account. Why Edison Why Edison's did it story keeps spreading. Edison vs. Tesla, one of the most famous inventor rivalries in popular culture. That rivalry in real and some professional aspects in later popular narratives that cast Tesla as a wrong genius make a simple villain hero story appealing, saying Edison tore it down, fits the tidy narrative, even though it's inaccurate.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

So again, we're talking about a scapegoat. We're talking about excuses, we're talking about bullshit. Yeah. It's unfortunate. But at the same time, like everybody has sort of their rise before the fall type situation. He was not immune to this, as you touched on. He was in really financial difficulty, and we're sort of fast forwarding after the whole ordeal with the showman and the visionary, and then obviously the man myth legend, and then obviously to close out his rivalry with Edison. Prolific as he was in his realm, he sort of died sort of a sort of a martyr's death. It was it was kind of interesting the scenario and sort of the details that surround his passing and what happened in the latter days and weeks after he had passed. He was in really bad financial ruin, apparently. He was like, I wouldn't say deadbroke, but probably pretty close to deadbroke when he did pass away. Yeah, he was like penniless. Yeah, his investors and all sorts of stuff that people that had backed him had basically said that, you know, what you're talking about, bro, is a really cool idea and it's great and everything, but we want to charge people. It can't be monetized. And there's no real way that this works from a monetary standpoint. And they're they basically just pulled their backing and basically said we can't do it. Um as far as I'm I'm sure, I'm sure the reasons and the excuses for why they did what they did, whoever the the people were, I'm not sure exactly who it was, but their main reason from what I understand is that it couldn't be monetized. It came down to simple dollars and cents. Which again, if we're talking about, you know, this guy was just trying to better the world, why does it have to come down to money? That that would be my biggest question is would you rat like, is it so much more important? And apparently it is because we went with uh we went with the idea of monetizing it. What's so bad about giving people free energy? Does it just come down to greed for you, or where do you s where where do you where do you lay with that one?

SPEAKER_01 43:18

It's greed. It's 100% about the money, or else they they would say fine, yeah, fuck it, do it. If they could, they would charge us to breathe the air that we breathe right now. Guarantee.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

That's fair.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

If they could go fucking. Well, they do, well, they do to a certain degree. They do with the taxes. You're right. They do. So they're gonna they're gonna monetize fucking everything. Here's here's how you know that's what it is. Okay, for X amount of years, you know, the government and and and medical industry and everybody said, you know, you only need to have a few glasses of water a day. That's it. As soon as they started selling bottled water, it was like, oh, you gotta have eight bottles. Bottles of water a day and blah blah blah. It's like, okay, assholes. Yeah, now that you're selling water to us, you gotta right? Like, I don't know. I just anything they can monetize, they're gonna do it. Yeah, they don't care about bettering. It has nothing to do with that's why, you know, we've talked about in other episodes about, you know, like ancient alien theory about, you know, w these beings, why are they so much more advanced than us? And like they don't have the greed aspect. And we as humanity won't be able to ascend to that next level of call it third eye, whatever you want to call it, but the next level of being until we drop the greed. And we're not going to. That's just human nature. It's gonna take probably it would take a million millions of years for us to drop that, unless we all become AI robots, Blake.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Well, that's a com that's a conversation for another time when we've had an in-depth conversation. We actually have an episode on AI that's actually pretty sick. It's one of our long it's one of our longer episodes that we had to cut down, but it was a really interesting conversation. Like I said, I mean if you're gonna I mean that that's that's the cool thing about being in tech is that if if this guy or electricity didn't exist, your boy wouldn't have a job. Mm-hmm. Neither would I. And you look at the way computers have become such a mainstay in just general society, especially for us as Americans. I mean, we do everything on the computer. We we we do everything. We we shop, we we handle our lives through social media, we watch movies, everything is done through that conduit. So if we we wouldn't have televisions, we wouldn't have computers, we wouldn't have electric cameras, you know, a lot of stuff wouldn't be our at our disposal if, you know, Tesla, let alone Edison, didn't exist. I'm sure it would have came about in some form or fashion, but would have happened the same way, absolutely not, and that's the point, is that this stuff was a turning point, just like AI is, it's a it's it's a turning point in human society and us in our existences as habitants of this planet. We have the luxury of being able to do stuff literally sitting in a chair. Um, and that wasn't always the case. But another thing that really got, and then this is sort of goes into the same thing as far as what we've talked about in other episodes as well, is people are scared of sort of what they don't know or what they're not able to explain. And that was his biggest problem being Tesla later in his life as he became more and more eccentric. Um and that's what they sort of attribute to him part of his demise was how eccentric he was becoming and how much he was sort of pushing into the future and pushing the envelope and all that kind of stuff. Oddly enough, the last couple of, you know, I would probably say five to ten years, maybe fifteen years of his life, he was living out of a hotel in New York called the New Yorker, and that's ultimately where he met his demise because of a quote unquote heart attack, from what I've read. You know, you you mentioned the guy in the nineties, and I actually vaguely know what you're talking about with uh the guy in the nineties of the eighties that came up with the water the water-powered car, the hydropowered car. But that kind of stuff, you know, all of that was he just before his time? Do you think he was like, do you think he was pushing it too far? Do you where do you sort of stand on where he was like where the eccentricity meets reality that has to be sort of a, I guess in logical sense, it's got to be sort of a balance. Do you think he was too too far to one side of the spectrum? Do you think it was beyond? I guess, I guess to boil it down, do you think it what he was proposing and what he thought was a good application of whatever he was trying to implement, do you think that was ahead of our understanding?

SPEAKER_01 47:33

I don't think it was ahead of our understanding. What I think is that he was honestly like too nice and too good of a person. He had too big of a heart. And, you know, think about this. And I if you can find this through Chat GPT or Google or whatever, if you can find this out while I'm talking, try to look it up. I would love to know how much money he made off of the Niagara Falls project and some of this other stuff. Did he get any money from this that he personally pocketed or no? Because I don't think he did. I think he took the bare minimum he didn't think about money, which probably was his biggest downfall. Because if you think about it, Blake, I mean, just that that Niagara Falls project, he he had to he could have probably gotten a lot of money. If the tables were reversed, Edison, if Edison would have been the guy to do it, Edison would have protected himself and and made sure he got a boatload of money. I can see a look on your face, so go ahead. Tell them tell me something. He took nothing. He received no money for that project. That's his biggest downfall.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

He tore up his, according to the information I'm reading right now, he literally tore up the royalty contract with the Westinghouse Electric Company. He did it out of respect, apparently, to George that believed in and invested in his alternating current technology. Also, there's some like backstory, apparently, here that Westinghouse's company that was in charge of the patent and the royalty was facing a lot of corporate warfare from GE, funny enough, which is really interesting considering what we're talking about and the whole war of like corporations and things like that. Oh, yeah, General Electric and Westinghouse, big, big rivals. And by relinquishing Tesla's contract, he helped save the company from financial ruin. That's apparently the backstory. So not only did he not take money, he was doing it based off a relationship that he had with the person that believed him in the first place. Name a better type of human being.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

You can't. That's like Keanu Reeves, post. But that's like but like you understand what I'm saying? Like a genuine human being, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

He did it for the pure Jones of helping people and making it making it something that everybody could understand and let alone use. It wasn't about the money. Clearly, if it clearly it wasn't about the money, and then on top of that, it cost him millions, likely billions of dollars to do what he did. Oh, yeah. Like, think about think about the fact that literally everything, even to this day, stuff is run on AC current. Yeah, absolutely. And he died in let me look it up. I know we have it in our notes. I think it was 47. 43. Okay. So we're talking about 60 years would be 2000, 2003. We're talking almost a hundred years, brother. Like, that's kind of crazy. It's like the same, it's like the same thing with like the uh there's a great story, and I'm going off on a tangent, but it still makes sense. There's a great story and a great like like wives tale about the guy that invented Victoria's Secret. Have you ever heard this story? Yeah. So the guy that invented Victoria's Secret, and I'm I'm blanking on his name, but apparently he was an entrepreneur that came up with the idea for Victoria's Secret, sold it to a company for like a couple hundred thousand dollars, and now you have Victoria's Secret literally having fashion shows all over the world. They're they're the standard for women's lingerie, and then he died in in relation to that story, it's the same thing, but the guy ended up like taking a dive off the Golden Gate Bridge.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

They sold to another company, I think, within six months to a year of him selling it originally for a couple hundred thousand. They sold it to another company and they sold it for an obscene.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

It was like a couple, it was like a ten, ten, ten, or twenty or thirty million dollars or something like that. Yes, yeah, it was insane. So, like that that that is sort of a a parallel comparison, but you're talking about okay, you're talking about women's lingerie, it has its place, right? Okay, we I think we can all agree on that. But you're talking about something that literally revolutionized not one application, but society in general, human mankind. It was applicable to tons of things, it was applicable to warfare, to aircraft, to powering your house. Like I said, construction companies wouldn't exist. All this stuff wouldn't have happened if this dude didn't exist. NASA wouldn't exist. Right. I mean, it like the list goes on and on of what he was able to sort of put this towards. Um, and like I said, we we we said we're gonna get sort of like the darker side of like his death and sort of the roundabout way we're gonna sort of end the podcast. But essentially he died on January 7, 1943. Um, his body was found two days later, but the the circumstances of finding him, I think I want to have you touch on because you probably know a little bit more about it than I do. I know the bits and pieces, but as far as like what happened with when he was found, the the time leading up and after he was found, like the couple like like like let's say four or five hours or so before and after. You want to touch on that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 52:51

So, from what I have read and talked about was he passed away, and I believe it was his nephew who went to collect his belongings from that New Yorker hotel, uh, which funny. Uh, you know my cousin Lindsay? She went there, she like saw the room and they took a tour underneath because his underneath the hotel was where he would work.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

Okay, so was it is it like homage to him at all or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 53:19

Yeah, kind of, yeah. You can actually see like where he worked and stuff, yeah. Where he lived. That's pretty dope. That's actually pretty sick. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the things I would definitely go see. Like if I ever went to New York City. I probably won't be going there. Anyway, his nephew goes there to collect his belongings. And, you know, like you had mentioned earlier, he had, you know, close to a thousand patents. He goes up to his room and it is there's nothing. It is completely cleared out. They took all of his patents, someone took all of his patents. Later on, they find out that uh the FBI seized all his all his stuff, his trunks, his documents. And what's interesting is uh anybody here wants to take a guess at who led that seizure of documents. If you guessed Donald Trump's uncle, John G. Trump, you'd be right. He's the one that took all those patents. So pretty interesting. I would love to know. I know from you know government websites they've released, you know, top secret documents now that come out and literally projects that patents that Tesla had owned. The FBI uses these. A lot of it they use in World War II and the Cold War and a lot of stuff. So they're using his stuff. That's what sucks. It's in the government's hands now. So I I don't know, you know, how I guess back then, well, it's the government, it's the FBI, they get away with a lot of stuff that they shouldn't. So what's your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 54:57

I think it was the same sort of scenario that we had with Edison. I think that they saw an opportunity and they seized it. There was a lot of stuff, he was no longer here, unfortunately, to fend for himself or defend himself. Like I said, they saw an opportunity, they seized it, they saw something that they could monetize, and that was sort of that was that for me. I mean, it's not a great ending to a it's not a great ending to a man or or an entity that was so pivotal in giving us stuff that, you know, a hundred years later, it's still the not the exact same process, but it's a remedy of that process. It's been obviously tweaked and and used the way it has been. I don't think he gets I don't think he gets the credit that he deserves. I think we we with I think with the roundabout way that we've gone through the episode, I I just think that he was sort of shafted. I genuinely believe that it was it's a d it's not necessarily a detriment, but it's sort of a slight, in my personal opinion. I mean, you're talking about a guy that gave away literally billions upon billions upon billions of dollars, maybe not back then, but at least for his family these days, and in the grand scheme of things back then would have been less let's just call it what it is, life-altering, life-changing amounts of money. I mean, he would have had the world at his fingertips.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

I can't believe that he didn't have a will that left those patents, at least to his nephew or someone. But whatever. It's crazy, it's sad, and that's why I think it's so important that we talk about Tesla and get his name out there even more, because you know, I think Addison gets credit for a lot of you know, and we didn't talk about it a lot this episode. Tesla was Addison's quote unquote apprentice, and um Addison took a lot of credit for stuff that Tesla did as his apprentice, which is what happens when you're an apprentice, but you know, I think that there's even more stuff out there that think about this. If he didn't want to take the money and all that stuff, and the royalties from Westinghouse, imagine how he was as Edison's apprentice. He didn't know. Yeah, that's a good point.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

I mean, that that sort of brings up a question that I was sort of mulling over in my head as you were talking, is that like it'd be interesting to be sort of like a fly on the wall as we were talking about last episode with like the Illuminati and stuff. Like you asked me the question of like what secret society I would want to sort of be a fly on the wall for. I'd like to hear that conversation of the partnership and what the terms were. I think it would be interesting to learn that.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

With Westinghouse or the apprenticeship?

SPEAKER_00 57:22

No, I'm talking about the apprenticeship.

SPEAKER_01 57:23

I'll bet you there wasn't even a written contract.

SPEAKER_00 57:26

You think he just took it at his word? I think well, I mean, being the type of person that he was with all the research we've done, it would make sense.

SPEAKER_01 57:33

Yeah, I think he was just a by the word person.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

He was bowed at bowed it as with as the kids say. Yes, totally. Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

Real quick, can we talk about the Philadelphia experiment before we end this thing?

SPEAKER_00 57:47

No, no, there's a couple things that I wanted to get into, and and you know, after we talk about somebody as prolific as Tesla, we sort of gotta sort of get into his legacy and sort of like what he sort of left on the table for us to sort of grit our teeth on. So first thing I wanted to talk about is we didn't touch on it, but it was a pretty prolific thing that he came up with, or at least after he died, was the death ray thing that he was apparently responsible for.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

Yeah, yes. Project Nick. Project Nick was the code name for uh for this death ray. It's not, it's very poorly documented, but the code name was was Project Nick. This was a World War II. Hitler was coming out in the Nazi regime, they were doing their own stuff as far as like trying to do travel. They I'm pretty sure they Germany had the first fighter jet, jet-powered engine, right? Because that was Warner von Braun. That you might be right.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

As far as rocket propelled like rocket propelled and that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

Yeah, so they had that, and then we came, you know, we copied them and came out with our own version. So we were in this like war going on with that.

SPEAKER_00 58:53

I was gonna say it was almost like a like uh like an aviation version of the space race type of deal.

SPEAKER_01 58:58

Yeah. So obviously, before this, Tesla came up with a uh uh he made claims that late in life he could do a particle beam, which was focused energy, kind of like a direct energy weapon.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

So essentially we're talking, I mean, we're talking about an energy weapon, we're essentially talking about a laser.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Yes, it's a laser, 100%. Um and they were gonna try to use it during the Cold War and all sorts of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 59:26

There's actually in the documentary that we talked about, just to sort of piggyback off the whole laser beam thing, I think it's called, forget where it's at, but it's called Iron Beam. It's a Iron Beam is it's essentially a missile, it's not a missile, it's a global defense system and project. I forget where it originated, but they said it was at some sort of trade show, and I can't remember who came up with it. If you can look it up sort of while I'm talking, given the synopsis of what it is. Essentially, Iron Beam is the exact technology that Tesla came up with, and now it's used as a national security and defense system. I'm blanking on the company that uh that came up with it. But essentially, like I said, it is a focused energy weapon basically to shoot anti it's basically an anti-aircraft gun. It's an AA gun, but essentially it uses energy instead of like a projectile, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

Okay, so basically in that episode um of Ancient Aliens, uh um it's suggesting that the modern Israeli laser defensive. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:34

It was it was Israel. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:36

Yeah, is is similar to Nikola Tesla's death ray concept from the 1920s and 30s. Uh Nikola Tesla spoke of a teleforce weapon or death ray in the 1920s. There is intended to shoot down projectiles and aircraft from a long distance.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:53

It's an interesting concept if you think about it, because we do we do use lasers in everyday life. We use them, you know, when you run your groceries across the counter, that's a laser. You know what I mean? So it's not something that we haven't we don't use in our daily life, but uh but imagine weaponizing that. The possibilities with it are endless, especially if energy being a renewable resource, you would never run out of ammunition. It would always be functional, it would always be ready to go, and all that kind of stuff, and would be catastrophic to whatever you point the motherfucker at. 100%. But 100%. The other really cool thing is there's been a lot of talk too about the fact that Tesla wasn't just doing this stuff by happenstance, is that there's actually a myth and sort of aura around the fact that he was being fed this information by an extraterrestrial source. And we've talked, we've we we've talked on this podcast about some extraterrestrial stuff, but do you do you think he was a conduit or do you think he was just sort of savant in his own realm and was ahead of everybody else? What do you think? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:55

I mean, he locked himself away up in, I think he had his original place was in Colorado. And there's a lot of UFO sightings out there. You gotta think timetable with this. You know, a little bit before Roswell, right? Ten years or so, 14 years or so. No, well, I mean, he died in 43. Roswell happened in 45.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

Oh, it happened in 45? Okay, I thought it happened in 55. That's my bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

Don't forget that thing happened in Texas in like the 18th century. Oh, that we talked about, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, um, I don't know. I've heard that theory. I think it's it's interesting to think about. There are some times in his life that kind of like he just kind of goes away a little bit and then comes back, which is interesting because then maybe we can do an episode on on this guy because something very similar, and he was an absolute genius. Unbelievable. Leonardo da Vinci.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:58

Yeah. No, see, uh not only do I want to do one on Leonardo da Vinci, but I you you could do ones on Plato, you could do one on Socrates. I took some intro classes, I'm you know, not an expert, but I took some intro classes and read like Plato's or uh Plato's Symposium and lots of work on Socrates and Aristotle and all that kind of stuff. We could definitely do an episode on that. I'd I'd actually really like that. That'd be sort of a deep dive into philosophy and stuff like that. Yeah, we're talking about how the world works and like the different laws of different like laws of being on this earth and like what everything means and how it's all interconnected, that would actually be a really cool episode. I'd definitely be down for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:33

Yeah. But what's interesting is is you know, there's like seven years, seven or eight years where Da Vinci's off the record books. He just essentially disappears. And then he comes back and he's this amazing painter, and just he, you know, he he was a crazy inventor.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

He invented, you know, yeah, he was the he was what he he developed one of the first flying machines. Yes and that kind of stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

So you kind of gotta wonder, like, similar kind of.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

Yeah, right? Like Well, definitely, definitely tools of the trade for sure. I mean, they're definitely cut from the same cloth in that respect. I 100% agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:08

Yeah, uh, you know, and okay, we can go, let's not go that route, let's go a completely different, darker route. Alistair Crowley, okay? Alistair Crowley, he literally documented that he talked to this, I forget the name of it, this alien being, this little green being that he would talk to that would visit him and give him messages and blah blah blah. Um, so I don't know. I don't know. Would it surprise me? No. Yeah. I agree with you on that for sure. I d I don't know if you can just happen to figure that some of the listen, I don't think people understand. I own I currently own a patent, not using it, but I currently own a patent. I don't think people understand what goes in in the process to getting one fucking patent. Get one patent. Okay? It's a pain in the ass. To do what he did, and then at the pace, like, dude, you gotta think, a thousand patents, how much time did that take?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:11

Especially when there was no computers, no automated form of of getting it done, and uh, you know, how new the process must have been even back then. He had to draw it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:21

He had to hand draw everything and like, dude, I don't know. I don't know how you have not even just to get the ideas with the time that it takes to do all that, and this guy had no money.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:32

And just the logistics of getting it filed and logistics, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:36

Obviously, you gotta send that stuff to New York, right, or wherever that he was doing it from. I don't know. Yep. Um it's crazy. It's crazy. So I I I don't put anything sure, he probably was somehow chosen to be a communicator. It was coming from somewhere, that I think that's for sure. I mean, not to be a dick, but like have you looked

SPEAKER_00 1:06:00

Looked at pictures of the guy? Yeah, he was definitely an eccentric looking, eccentric looking human being, that's for sure. He was definitely in a world of his own, that's for damn sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:09

Yeah, so like, I don't know. Maybe he was one of them who was like, you know what? I'm gonna go down there and I'm gonna show them that we everyone can live in harmony and they don't need to worry about paying for power and the basic needs of life, and everyone's gonna be happy.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:24

I mean, just hit him with the deuces and said, I'll see you in five hours.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

And I'm gonna have something for you, just wait on it. Yeah, and all his alien friends went, You're nuts. And they proved him right.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:37

Yeah. I know you wanted to get in one more topic, and I think it it's another one of his big things was the was the Philadelphia experiment. Yeah. I know that's one more thing I want to touch on because it's important just because of the allure around the incident in general. I'll let you sort of set the stage and then we can sort of talk about it if that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:55

Yeah, absolutely. According to the story around October 28th, 1943, he died January 7th of 43, so that's important.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:05

So you said it was October, so we're talking what, three months, four months?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:09

Well, no, I mean that's about seven months. Okay. January, January to October.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:14

Oh okay, okay, okay, okay, gotcha. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:17

January to October. So according to the story around October 28, 1943, at the United States Navy's Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, the destroyer escort, USS Eldridge, or sometimes another ship, was subject to a secret experiment to render it invisible to human observers and or radar and even teleport it. Tesla told everyone that he could he came up with a cloaking device. Okay. And after they took his patents, this is one of the things that they tried doing. The story further claims the ship was briefly teleported to the Norfolk Navy shipyard in Virginia or otherwise vanished and reappeared.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:03

I wanna I want to preface this. Like it evaporated and like just went into fucking thin air.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:18

And then it came back.

unknown 1:08:21

Okay?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:21

The way it came back, the way I was gonna say the way it came back, but I'm I'm sure I'm sure you're gonna touch on that here in a second, because this is wild.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

Yeah. Crew members purportedly suffered bizarre effects, some allegedly fused with the hull, others became insane, some went missing. So they literally were in the hull of the ship, like in the steel fused into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:45

Yeah, like my man was like coming out of the ship.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:48

Yes, yes, yes, yes. The story often links the experiment to advanced unconventional physics. Example like Einstein's Unified Field Theory, electromagnetic fields, project rainbow as a code name or UFO tech. The legend usually includes a notion of government cover-up, claims that naval records were falsified, the ship logs hidden or altered, and official denial of the event. Here's what the documented records say. Here's what the historical slash official documentation shows. The US Navy via the Naval History and Heritage Command and the Office of Naval Research has stated that no official records have been found to substantiate any experiment as described in visibility or teleportation involving the USS Eldridge of Philadelphia or elsewhere. The ship's war diary and deck logs for USS Eldridge show that in the period spanning its commissioning, August 1943 through December 43, it was not in Philadelphia at the time alleged for the experiment. For example, it underwent sea trials off Bermuda and then escorted convoys to North Africa, etc. Specifically, the information sheet from the ONR states that Albert Einstein's unified field theory was never completed, and searches of archival records have failed to find any project rainbow relating to the invisibility slash tele teleportation claims, skeptical analysis. Many researchers classify the story as an urban myth or a hoax, given the lack of credible primary evidence and contradictions in the story.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:21

I think something interesting that that you sort of mentioned was the Bermuda thing. Or it was or it had passed by there in some form or fashion. I think that's interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:37

I guess the Go ahead. Go ahead. You you you you could switch those records so easily, especially back then.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:44

100%, yeah. I I like the it's kind of like, and I was sort of thinking about this as you were talking and given sort of the stage of the event and the scenario and all that. It sort of has an eerie resemblance to Roswell. A little bit. What was done with Area 51 and all of the conspiracy and shadowiness, I guess, that had to do with that event, and now we're finding out some 70, 60, 70 years later that it was all true and that it was documented and there actually is all of this stuff. Do you think that's gonna be do you think that's sort of a smoking gun that hasn't been unveiled yet? Amongst other things, not just that, for example, but other conspiracy theories. Do you think do you think there's a lot that's gonna come out while we're still alive?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

Oh yeah, especially because of the Freedom of Information Act. I mean, they're already released, you know, you can go literally go on government websites and look these files up, these declassified documents, and they're there. You know, how long did the government say that Area 50 51 didn't exist and then all of a sudden they come out and oh yeah, here it's yeah, it's real, it's a real place. You know, and that's just one example. There's the th the the the gimbal UFO, you know, we're going through COVID and then all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, hey UFOs are real, we've been studying 'em. Here they're like it it's just gonna keep coming out. Um for you know, I think they gotta go like seventy-five years until they can release stuff. So after 75 years, like you gotta think, okay, subtract right now and subtract 75 years. So what's coming up next? So you think there's a cap? There oh that no, there absolutely is. Like that's the rules. That's how declassification of top secret documents work. I believe it's gotta be 75 years. They can release them in 75 years. That's why you're just now hearing about all of the JFK stuff and like MLK stuff, and yes, Trump did the executive order, blah, blah, blah. All that did was speedline the process. Yeah, it just sort of it sort of pushed it to the front of the line type shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:59

Where you're gonna sort of be suckling at the teeth, so to speak. Yeah. Trying to trying to get more information and he just sort of speed ran it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:06

Yeah, so you gotta think. Right now we're in the sixties, okay, of shit getting released. Wait till we hit the seventies. Wait till you get to the get to the seventies and the eighties and you learn about what really happened with Watergate, because Nixon was set up. Like there's a lot, like we could do a whole episode on that. The Watergate scandal. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:28

So sort of the secret taping and stuff that went on, it's actually a pretty wild story if you really dig into it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:36

Do you uh do you think do you what do you think? Do you think we're just gonna learn more and more crazy shit in the next 30 years, 40 years?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:46

I do and I don't. I think that they're going to do exactly what they've been doing and feeding us little tidbits of information, and then we're we're left to sort of piece them together, and once it becomes common knowledge and they can't turn away from the fact that everybody knows to a certain extent the meat and cheese and what's going on, it's the egg in the face type scenario, right? It's that they have to they have to sort of fork over the information and say, okay, you caught us. Here it is. Type shit. To round out the conversation, what is your viewpoint on everything that we've talked about? Do you think where do you stand on the argument that he was just sort of shafted, or do you think he was ahead of his time? Do you think he was somebody that was feeding, like I said, the information and it was just too much for people to break down and digest? And where do you stand on him as like a person in in recorded history as far as what like what do you think about him?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:38

I think he's underappreciated, undervalued. Um it's you know, done purposefully. I guess you could say he was ahead of his time just because of his thinking that everyone should have it and it's free energy. Um I would just say he was too nice and genuine of a person to be dealing in what he was dealing with. I just you know and God bless him. I listen, I'm not gonna sit here and like dog on him. You know, give more power to him. I mean I d he didn't have kids, right? Not that I know of, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:08

I can look that I can look that up. I don't believe he did.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:12

I d I don't think so. I mean. So I mean, me as a father, I am not doing anything that requires any amount of time and not getting paid for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:26

Yeah, he was I just looked it up. He was never married, no children. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:30

Um didn't think he'd be able to with the amount of time he spent on all that shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:34

I was gonna say, I mean, who would have the fucking time?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:36

Right. That guy would be pulling the uh the Bill Clinton in the Oval Office if he was getting anything done.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:42

Yeah, it's I mean I I just don't know how you find the damn time. With the amount of work that he was invested in and that it was sort of his lot in life. I mean, he didn't really care about it. It seems like I don't know the dude of never gonna I mean hopefully at some point I'll be able to ask him questions in this this life or the next. It would be kind of cool to sort of sit down and chop it up. But I do think that I agree with you. He was he was ahead of his time to the point where people didn't know what he was trying to do. It didn't make sense. But they were also looking at from a very trivial, a very materialistic point of view, in my personal opinion. They were looking for the end-all and the catch-all and how much money they could make from from what was going on. I do agree with you that the betterment of society was sort of on the back burner. As much as hard as that as hard as that is to come to terms with, I think that wasn't even close to being at the forefront of their logical thinking. It it just it was too lucrative that it sort of overshadowed the fact that it was a benefit outside of that realm. And it's really unfortunate that he like I said, he sort of died a martyr. I mean, like you're talking, you're talking about a dude that was literally trying to better humanity and was basically thrown to the wolves and said, Well, we've got the information, we've got everything we need, we don't really need you anymore. It's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:00

Yeah, it's pretty shitty.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:02

But I guess a closing question that we can end for the episode, and it's kind of a it's kind of a generalistic question, is do you think that his greatest achievement was not necessarily him anything that he invented, but his idealism? Like his idealism, do you think that overshadows anything that happened to him, the way he passed away, what he was shafted from? Do you think the idea remains? Do you think that's his biggest legacy? Because I certainly think that him going down in history as somebody that's wanted to better mankind as anything more is so much more reputable, and so and and it's kind of like the moralistic view on the whole situation. Like a lot of people would say, well, he didn't make any money from the shit, he was a complete failure. I don't believe that for a fucking second.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:48

Well, that's all that's a I mean, he obviously didn't fail. He failed at protecting himself, you know, he failed at that, but I mean that's necessarily naiveness, though.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:01

I think that was just him genuinely putting faith he he achieved his goal and he was genuinely putting faith in people that he thought he trusted.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:08

Yeah. You know, and if he had a wife and kid, then maybe he would have been more protective.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:12

Like left it to his kids or his wife or whatever, yeah. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:15

He might uh he maybe he doesn't rip up that Wessinghouse contract. Maybe he's gonna be able to get a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:20

He thinks about his family and his kids first and all that kind of shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:23

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe he says, hey, just you know, instead of giving me the royalties of whatever we're at, give me five percent or give me, you know, a half a percent, which still would have made him a millionaire.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:34

Um but it's like the mark, it's like you talk about we talked about Mark Zuckerberg and all that sort of fiasco with Facebook and stuff. Like, I just want my name on the masthead, bro. I just want to be given credit for it. That's all I care about. And that's the crazy thing. That's the wildest thing about him, is that didn't even matter. No, he didn't even want the credit necessarily. He was like, okay, like we're all human beings, we all want credit for shit that we've done, whether it's you know, whether it's hitting a home run or you know, creating infrastructure for the entire world that is still being used today. We all want that gratification, but he wasn't even interested in that necessarily. That's what's really wild.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:09

Yeah, I don't know. I would rather have the money and no one know me.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:12

I mean, it's all it's it's all about it's all about your perspective. It's all about what you put stock in. And it seems, like I said, I didn't personally know, dude. I don't I had done the re I'd done some research on him, but you know, he seems like a very fitting type of person that you would want to sort of emulate. He was about the right stuff. He was he he purely was for the j he got a Jones off of just making the world a better place, at least in a in his own way, in his own right, and his own application of what he was trying to bring into the universe, into the world, and into humanity. I mean, he was just about the right shit, in my personal opinion. It it's I keep saying it, it's a complete shame that he gets sort of like he gets sort of like the backs he gets sort of like the I don't know the right way to put it, I guess like the backhand compliment type thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:59

Where like you were basically you took this dude's ideas, you put them into numerous upon numerous, infantasmal amounts of application towards what he was able to invent and create, and then you basically leave him with nothing. Mm-hmm. It's a it it's it's it's a cautionary tale, if anything, in my personal opinion.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:17

100%. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:21

But do you have any final thoughts on the episode or like any anything you want to sort of touch on before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:28

I just I I just hope it you know he starts to get the recognition that he deserves. That's what I've always I've always felt really some way about it, because that guy should be in every textbook in every school all over the world. That's who we should be learning about, not Edison and not him and Westinghouse and those guys. Should be Tesla. That's who we should be learning about.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:49

Yeah, you look at it, like I said, I again it looks you have to look at it from I'm I'm a pretty moralistic person, and I think you are as well. It's the one word I can think of to sort of describe it is selflessness. He wasn't worried about him, he wasn't worried about he was worried about giving you a tool that was literally inf like I said, infantasmal as far as what you could do with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:15

And not only did he come up with that, but he came up with so many other things and so many other inventions and things that literally changed the scope of human, like where we're going as a human race, that he has to be in those same conversations as your Einstein's. Um I mean, talk about Oppenheimer's biggest achievement, it was a frickin' death weapon. I mean, he came up with death weapons. I mean, the death ray is a perfect example of something that is used to be weaponized, but he has to be mentioned in those conversations, my personal opinion, with your Copernicus's, with your Plato, with Socrates, Aristotle, all those guys. Yeah. Because they change the framework of how we view the world, the way it views us, and what we're doing here. It's he has to be mentioned in that breath. There's no there's no ifs, ands, or buts. There's no way around it. And I hope, like you, that as we progress through life, we start figuring out more and more interesting stuff about him because, like I said, from a moralistic standpoint, he he was the best type of human being. He was not out for himself and he did things that were for the betterment.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:15

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:15

I just really I just really hope he gets the recognition that he deserves.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:18

But um Yeah, I I think it's time that well, I think it's time that that, you know, somebody has to rewrite these textbooks. They have to.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:27

Yeah, but as you know, we posed the we we we we posed the question at the beginning of the episode if you could change the world, would they let you change it? Probably not. Vast majority of the time, and we think he's just one of the only c one not not one of the only cautionary tales in history of somebody that was trying to advocate for the greater good and was ultimately silenced and shut away and discredited and all sorts of crazy shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:53

Like I said, it's really unfortunate because God knows what he had in the back of his head, and if they weren't trickling like you said, sort of the trickle-down effect, if we were able to find out what he was really up to and and they actually put it towards the betterment of trying to make things better rather than gaining money from it, I think we'd have a very different perspective on not just energy, but just in general. But to wrap up, I know that you guys I know this this was sort of like a synopsis of a life rather than a group, and we wanted to sort of take it to more of a singularity type of tip. Um but it was I I I genuinely thought it was an interesting discussion. A lot of the stuff that you touched on, I wasn't really that privy to. It wasn't something that I mean, I knew about the guy, I knew like the the cold hard facts and the cliff notes, but sort of genuine genuinely talking about the way he was and the type of person he was and what he was able to do with the time that he had here, even though he was basically blacklisted, discredited, and basically mold over as a piece of history. It was it was an interesting discussion. I actually really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:50

Yeah, yeah, I like I like this one. It's good.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:53

But as we wrap up the episode, uh, I want to mention to you guys one more time to follow us on our socials. We're gonna be posting clips of this episode. Um, there'll be little snippets. I think I have it. Uh I think we're gonna clip them around a minute or so or a minute and a half. We have some stuff already up. We have stuff from our AI episode, um, as well as NASA, the one that we did. And then I think we have some stuff from uh last episode about Secret Societies, too. So these will be up. It'll be on Spotify as well. But like I said, follow us on Instagram at um obscurecast, and then the same thing for x.com obscure cast. And uh Dana, it's been a pleasure. We will see you guys on the next episode. Thanks for listening, guys. See you guys.