Episode Transcription

00:00 Hey, thanks for listening to things. I learned last night. It's my favorite thing to do. My second favorite to do is stand up comedy and so we love for you to cover those shows this month. I am in Houston Plano. That's in Texas, Kingsport, Tennessee, Fredericksburg, Virginia, Charlotte, North Carolina, Milton, West Virginia. Where's that at? Huh? Raleigh, North Carolina. It's in West Virginia, Indianapolis, 00:24 Omaha, Saint Louis and Springfield, Missouri. So March twenty second, I am in Nashville, Tennessee, filming my comedy special. I got rescheduled and there's two shows on that Sunday. If you're within driving distance, put on a couple episodes, make the drive, come to the special taping. I'd love to see you there, so thanks for coming to shows. Let's get into the episode. Amen. What's up? Have you happy to be? Have you ever heard of a Shuji Nakamura? Okay, 00:51 when I said that we got to get a couple of episodes done today. We got to speed up. That doesn't mean that you got to come in here like you heard of shoot, shoot, she, she, she, knock Amara. So you were like you ever heard of Suji, not a number yeah. I'm trying to make this doubles like no, no, no, no, baby. We're going fast. 01:07 How do I do this, but make it less hot? That's how the Mormon started. We started this podcast when we were twenty three. You ever think about where we thought we'd be at this? 01:20 You ever think about what we thought life was gonna look like at this point? Yeah, it's crazy, 01:28 Things I learned last night. 01:37 is. Oh, so who is this? Shooji Nakamura? Here's a picture of him. ah Here's another picture of him. I shouldn't have laughed. Okay, here's another picture of him. Is this okay? Hold on for audio listeners. Yeah, here was an Asian gentleman. Is he Japanese? Yes and ah he don't stick on this one. Go to the first one. I the first picture is one that he's in a suit. 02:04 and it's like at the he's giving a speech somewhere. You know, they they always give you that tiny little mic, little mic, tiny little microphone on top of the you know, and I turn had that on the podium when I was growing up. Yeah, it looks like the Bob Barker microphone where he held that super long stick with a tiny little microphone on top stuck to the podium and then this one he looks like he's in a tanning bed of made of crystals. 02:29 he's a gonna polo and then this one he's it's like a it's an artsy picture. He's holding a light bulb and a book yeah. I can't quite tell what's in his hand there. It looks like I'll tract he's only a track yeah. Looks like an interstellar type thing. Is he a scientist? Is that what we're doing with a little okay? He's giving a key note in this one and 02:53 Okay, and then this one he's just pointing the light. Tim, why do you so many pictures of him? just him. Why do you what it seems like sometimes you don't come prepared at all and then other times you just bring? Is he holding a light saber? I think it's just a laser that's turned on. Okay, so what does he do then? Shoo, g, neck, a mara. Well, let me ask you this. Have you ever heard of uh blue light like the blue light glasses, not the 03:21 I mean, I guess you get the glasses because of blue light, but have you ever heard of like blue light? Yes, yeah, so that's him. He is that no, what does that even mean? What does that even mean? He's the guy who came up with blue light, but what does that mean? What do you mean? What does I guess we'll find out? What do you mean? What do you mean? Do it? Is it came up with blue light? It was like he looked at a traffic stop was like we got green light. We got red light. We got yellow light 03:50 it's not blue. It's not blue enough. I don't okay. What does that mean? No, so this is actually really significant. Is this the moment like when you said this you're there's a little bit of panic in your voice when you were like oh maybe this topic isn't exciting enough to talk about. Is that why you have thirty seven pictures of this guy? No, no pulling back up. No, okay, hold on 04:17 just like a normal one. Don't pull that one. I knew you're going to pull that one. I feel weird. Any bed in the crystal. Just go to that one. Yeah, this is the only one I have always not doing something with the light. 04:33 It honestly might be the only one I can find where he's not doing something with a light. What are you looking at? Are you trying to what are you are you comparing foreheads? Is that what you're doing right now? 04:43 yours might be bigger. Oh, one's a little bit bigger. Yeah, yo, hey, go back to that one though. You're gonna look good with this haircut. I think you'll rock that you think I'll rock that. I'm gonna shave my head before I get to that point. No dude, grow it out the back to a Larry David. I'm going to. Oh no way. I'm, I'm pretty close to shaving my head clean. I'm like, I'm getting really close. I'm not going to lie. Every time I watch a podcast clip and I go like this, I'm like 05:10 Is it that YouTube or that YouTube comment from Ezra that just gets you? No, he's been bullying you lately and I think he's like is yeah, yeah, yeah, it's working. No, I thought that way since long before Ezra showed up on the scene, but whatever it's fine. It doesn't bother me. I'm okay. I'm rubbering you are glue. uh 05:37 stop looking at like that. Okay, all right, so let's take the story back to nineteen sixty two. It's summer, nineteen sixty two general electric engineer by the name of Nick, Hall and Yak. uh This is an another cool guy, Nick, Hall and Yak. ah He was working from for general electric and they were trying to figure out the incandescent light bulb worked. You got light from it. Did he create led? Is that what we're? Is that where we're going? 06:08 okay. All right, so the incandescent libel, that's why he was holding light bulbs earlier as well. I was thinking okay, so he's the incandescent light bulb is what is draining too much power or what yeah well, it uses a lot of power, but it's also just incredibly inefficient because it heats up a coil to generate light and so only about two percent of the energy that you burn in an incandescent light bulb is used with light. The rest of it's just heat that radiates off of it, so if you touch it, it's hot yeah because of the heat and so there had been it's hot 06:36 because it's hot because of the hot. That's how little he thinks that you listener. That's hot because of the heat, the the electric community had for a long time been trying to figure out is there a way to love the idea of there being an electric community. So they have a flag that they have meetings. Yeah, they call them the buzzers. Hello buzzers. 07:04 do they? Can you come up with a better, better, better team name for them right off bolts? Oh, the gosh dang it. I hate that. That's immediately so much better. Yeah, and that's just the top one. That's just the first one I thought of. Oh no, the currents and the also cool. Yeah, the connectors. Yeah, I don't like that one. That sucks. It's better than buzzers, buzzers, buzzers is above the sockets. The socket, socket to them. I kind of like that. 07:33 that's probably there's that's probably they're probably the bolts and then their phrases socket to them and like that's all that's better than the buzzers. 07:46 anyways. I just, I thought it was funny when you're like the electric community. I just think that yeah, a funny concept have been long looking for. I'm looking for a better way to do light bulbs, a more efficient, the electric community fighting long and hard to figure out 08:11 like we got to do something about this. They're so hot because of the heat, I touch it with the rock, because the hot part is the hot part and what if we can do this without the hot part? How do I do this but make it less hot and that's how the mormons started? 08:31 How do we do everything to make it less? get less hot. So in 1962 there was an engineer working at General Electric by the name of Nick Holonyak. Here he is. 08:44 Okay, he looks like Doctor Bronner a little bit. He kind of does actually bald version here. He is. Here's another one where he's less. What is what these guys are the lights, dude, these guys, they love taking professional headshots with their lights. Let me do it with my light real quick. Yes. Oh, what do I want me to do with my hands? You're gonna cross them. You put them in pockets just just grab one of the lights grab one of your lights. 09:11 and he's holding it like Elizabeth Holmes in that photo. Yeah, he really is. I like this one the best. This is crazy. Where's a shining it towards face? Yeah, okay. This is like a yeah. He's like highlighting half his face. So Nick Holland, Yak, what he did is significant because he he was the guy who first came up with a led. Okay, so he but the problem was I guess a little bit about led, how LEDs work for this to make any sense. Maybe now is the right time to talk about this an led light. 09:41 Let me see. What is it? Let's start with I'm trying to decide which graphic is the best place to start here So deep within an LED light you have this this is gonna take maybe this is best to watch if you're listening I'm gonna try my best to illustrate what we're looking at here Yeah, but we're looking at a graphic Yeah shows what an LED light bulb looks like what like on the inside the little bulb piece and what I think a lot of people might think is that Because you look at a lot of LED bulbs and you have the bulb and a lot of times they have the color on them 10:10 Okay. The color doesn't come from the like casing like incandescent bulbs do. The color actually comes from the unit itself. There's this little terminal that creates the light. so LED stands for light emitting diode. That's what it stands for. And inside it, there is a diode. So the current just travels right through. And at the top there, we have this region where there is a 10:39 a little cavity that a wire connects to that sends charge into this cavity. How are you finding these topics buddy? I'm going to try. I'm going to try this. This story is really interesting. I'm going to try to make this part as quick as we can, quick and simple as we I'm just wondering how we got from, you know, I guess I I try to follow the trail. If you listen to the last couple episodes, like you can follow the trail of the Wikipedia articles that led him to where he is because you can go like Stuxnet led to 11:11 what was the one that just came out after Stuxnet, I don't know the one after Stuxnet and then Oh, good mall apartment. No, that was before Stuxnet, secret wall apartment Stuxnet party X and then three I Atlas. You can see how Stuxnet let him to three I Atlas right and then I'm assuming we'll figure out how three I Atlas let us here because now 11:33 and maybe you just been watching too many hang green videos and the confidence is through the roof over here. We're just like can explain LADs to people. So basically what an I think I think light emitting diode and I knew that word before we did this and that's why I said it was such confidence, and so you can see that at the top with a wire bond and reflective cap in the cavity right and so in that bowl like you have a positive terminal and that hits the photo P region region, which then it hits the active region 12:01 which then passes through to the in region. Now the in region. 12:11 doesn't really make sense for why that's there. 12:16 so essentially what is photons? Okay, so the negative goes back up through the positive a P and in positive and negative. I'm not more. Hey, don't ever talk to me like that. See the positive terminal goes through the photon and then hits the active region of the negative. So it's photons, it's it's positive and negative uh reacting to each other that generates energy that creates light and then you pass that back up through this cathode cathode 12:46 cathode and that comes back and all that's happening when you just go yeah or you go echo, turn the lights on so really close. uh Essentially what is happening there is you have this material and they give the top part of this a positive charge, a bottom part, a negative charge and then when you push some energy through it from a battery through this diode, what happens 13:13 is there are essentially empty spots within that negative region where when that positive region is charged with energy, you got it right, will drop from the positive region down to the negative region. And when it goes through, they call it the active region in this, but really it's a band gap. So there's just a gap in between the material. And when it goes through there, that's where it releases a bunch of energy and that's where the light comes out. And what is interesting is 13:44 what you just did in the microphone. Okay, no, so I've been listening to a lot of notebook L M yeah in preparation for this because it's on, which is also crazy. It's so insane, but it's nice if you've never used it. You can just dump a million sources, and if you don't know they reference the source material like this, yeah, and they interrupt each other and pause yeah and they will. They will stumble over their words and they will do things like this that where they go 14:11 like they will do weird mouth sounds, but it's a I yeah and they'll even say stuff at the same time like that yeah. It's very strange like they're having a conversation and the only thing they're missing is ten years of friendship and a little bit of bitterness. You know you can not. You can hear the just you can tell that the I should be richer. We say I should be rich. These AIs think they should these AIs are hitting their thirties and they feel slighted by their lot in life. 14:43 so so you've been listening to a lot of podcasts. I was like a lot of robot podcasts about this because that helps me learn um and they did make that mouse. So that's the only reason I brought that up is because you made fun of my mouse sound and they literally know I listen to one the other day. I ten years ago I sign up for a stand up comedy course online. It one of those you know just self got a courses Jerry Seinfeld, but no 15:07 Can you believe I feel doing on like courses? No, but it was like this is this course was clearly put together in two thousand and ten, so it's super text heavy. It is yeah, it's just reading yeah and I was like I'm. I don't want to read this thing. I got stuff to do and so I put I put it into L M yeah while I was running yeah and and it just gave me all the information. I was like that's actually it was really it's kind of crazy. It's honestly like 15:35 a lot of these AI tools out there, like we got reasons to hit on LM. Honestly, I don't have a lot of bad. I can I think that the things that we don't like about AI one. I don't like the AI slop videos like that stuff. I also do worry that within a couple years, like we just can't tell the difference between what's what's real and so that's actually what I asked you. If you listen to Colin Samir's podcast about the creator economy and how m 16:00 the thing that's going to set creators apart is not just our content, but the story behind our content. So the joke that we make about like hey, we're thirty and we just you know and we have ten years of friendship. That's going to be the selling point beyond just where characters that could be generated. You know yeah yeah yeah and so anyway, but there are some 16:18 and I also listen to another podcast that said the main difference between nuclear weapons and AI as far as the development works, because right now we're in an arms race with China, where it's like they're trying to get to artificial general intelligence and uh and so if we don't, if we just stop developing AI, then they're going to develop AI and then their AI is going to take over the world right. So that's the rash now that we have to right. We have to put us all in danger to make us more safe. It doesn't make sense 16:48 but it's the same thing with nuclear weapons, but the guy has said that the main difference is that with nukes there's no upside. There's zero upside to nuclear weapons right, but there's enormous upside to some of these AI to very double edge. thing that people don't like most about AI is the job displacement that's going to take place or could take place, but I think I think most of us if we stopped the general ah if AI stopped where it is now 17:15 like where it's like it could be used. We use in some of our videos. You see if you watch some of our shorts like I use it to supplement shots that we don't have or to tell the for storytelling. Yeah, I don't use it to make an entire video of AI or be deceptively AI, but uh for writing and for code and for what were you like? Were you talking about for the research? I think most of us are kind of like yeah. This is a. This is a good stopping point. The problem is they're going to keep pushing through yeah. 17:41 Alex died in our Jennifer's dead in the parking lot day thing like four years ago and we just AI gender his voice in every episode that shows up since then, so and Blair's been she's over there. She's been like she hits a button. She's like we gave her a sound board. Why do you keep doing that? She's not she's sitting right there. I love the idea of her flowed on a box, so but we just gave her a little sound board. 18:08 she can just she can just pipe in with Alex's voice. I've been Alex yeah voice changer. She talks into it. talks into a voice and then it comes into the mic like Alex. She's go yeah, that's how she talks. Have you seen this video on a little? She talks like this. That's what you're saying. Have you seen this video? 18:29 it's it's this girl who just does a ton of content on tick tock and recently she started this bit. So what's that where she's being taken over by demons so funny? What's the demons name? Do you remember the demons name Carl Carl? It is so freaking. I love that we're sitting through it like a part where you're going to explain to YouTube video. not going to explain it. That's such a not going to your old. You're so thirty one. I'm almost thirty two by time this comes out. It will still be thirty one earlier. I'll still be thirty one. We're fine. We're good. I'll be. I'll be honest earlier today. 18:59 we had our client here. We were shooting some business podcast and he asked us how old he asked. I think he asked just me how old I was and I was like I was like I'll be thirty two this year and then I in my brain I sat down and I haven't stopped thinking about how weird of a thing I said down and I was like thirty one and a half. We started this podcast when we were in our early twenties. No, I just think about no well that's crazy, but also like we started this podcast when we were twenty three. Yeah, you ever think about where we thought we'd be at this 19:32 you ever think about what we thought life was going to look like at this point? Yeah, it's crazy, huh? And anyway, him so rich. I knew he wasn't gonna be, but Tim thought he was going to be rich and every time he'd say it is a yeah. Well, one day when I'm rich, I'd go that's gonna happen for you. Some people happens for some people, it happen and you just need to learn how to settle for many ockery. 20:02 You know a seventeen year old girl fell ten thousand feet from a plane crash and landed in the Amazon forest and survived or did you know that the Australian government went to war with wild emus and lost? I'm Jaron and I'm Tim and each week on things are learned last night. We learn about a fun story from history and sometimes some alien conspiracies. It's a family friendly show and there's over three hundred episodes to get started with so search things. I learned last night wherever you get your podcasts. 20:32 so the big problem here was are you getting back to I'm just going to get back yeah make sense. So the way it worked is the amount the amount of energy right uh that came out during that band gap is how uh is what color the light that came out was okay is for you to build up enough energy to move through the spectrum of light. You had to increase the length of that band gap, but what would inevitably happen? 21:01 is if you did not have enough energy in the photon when it trans like when it tried to cross the band gap, it would shoot out in all directions and it wouldn't make it across. And so then it just it just broke. It just didn't function. Sure. ah And so that whole ah the band gap size made it to where logically you started on this bottom end of the visible light spectrum, which is red, because the band gap could be the smallest. And so 21:28 this guy, that's why all LEDs were read at the beginning, because that's the lowest amount of like a energy that energy that you need to yeah and the smallest band gap to got it got it. So this guy came up with it and he figured out a way to cross that divide and create a red light. Yes and this was in nineteen sixty two. Okay, thing is like a red light is cool and useful. They it pretty much immediately became used in clocks and like indicator lights on home appliances. Everything has red lights on 21:57 Yeah. so like, but it really is, it's just for like symbols and indicators. cats. 22:04 they did pretty quickly realize. Oh hey, we could shrink this gap a little bit um and we could drop out of the visual spectrum into infrared. This is flipped yeah and that's how remotes work. Is they it's the same sort of light you're just shooting infrared light um from a remote. That's why the light flashes right at the top of the yeah remote yeah, but it's just shooting infrared light wow and so it's outside the visual spectrum. I can still see it. It really bothers me at people's houses. 22:37 shared as superpowers supervision. It's infrared yeah. What we're How are you saying infrared infer yeah? There's two ours in the red, but you're saying infer infrared. You're saying inferred infrared infrared. This podcast sucks man. 23:01 the freaking worst infrared yeah. You're not saying all right infrared infrared infrared. The say together slow ready in for red now say fast in red. You're saying infrared. I will not have you gas light be like this infrared infrared. That's what I said okay, so 23:30 dude. You look like the santa and santa claus too. That's like spaz and out you know where he's like a short so getting he's like okay. You look sad. I love it so in the sixties yeah the late sixty sixty two the red led comes out by the late sixties. They come up with the green leds. They're moving across the visual light spectrum. They're able to find ways to so like this led behind us 24:00 isn't is working the same way yeah. It functions the same way, so it takes more energy to make a blue yes than a red yeah. The further you go along the spectrum, the more energy and the wider the gap has to be. 24:15 blue was purple all the way to the end. Well, this is the way this is making purple is a little different. We'll get to that in a second. No one should be making purple 24:30 What is that? You don't know church camp rules. No church camp rules are boys are blue, girls are red, no purple. Oh, I have never heard yeah yeah yeah. We did not know it was totally normal. It totally normal. All right, go ahead. 24:57 professor John. I think they're making purple behind the snack shit. No, that's like for real what they would call it. They'd be like oh, I saw someone kissing. They're making purple. They're making purple. Yes, that is so I agree. 25:16 You want to make purple in the HOV lane? What if we made purple in the HOV lane? 25:25 yikes. We're gonna make purple. We gotta close this gap. Oh no, so we gotta close this. Oh, are you? Is that okay? I'm not making purple with you. 25:41 I I feel like we got we have miscommunicated here, so anyway, get to the part where the story is interesting. Okay, so this immediately became an issue though, because now we have red and green light. You can use those in indicator lights, but they're useless if you want to light a home because they're red and green. They're not like that lighting that we use for lighting in your house and there's also it's just those two colors. If we wanted any other colors we needed 26:06 the full all three primary colors. had to get to blue so we could have RGB mix those colors and then make white light, and so this is mixing the three colors together. It's not it's not going all the way to purple. It's instead it's using um LEDs that are red, green and blue and mixing them to make the purple. How do we get to white all three of those colors? Yeah, you put red, green and blue on top of each other, increase the intensity. It's white. Okay, 26:36 And so, but that was a big problem because the gap in a blue light or the, I guess the theoretical gap to get to a blue light was going to be so large. There was a material science problem of we couldn't find the material that could create that large of a gap and have that much energy and keep it pure enough to where the energy could travel through it. And so there was a, was a pretty significant material science problem. So much so that throughout the sixties, 27:06 seventies and eighties. Pretty much every major electronics company was investing millions and millions of dollars into this, trying to figure out, trying to get blue, trying to get to blue. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to make blue. What if we made purple at RCA? uh And so yeah, hundreds of millions of dollars were invested through these three, three decades trying to get there and then came along. Shoju show Shooji Nakamura, Shooji Nakamura. He worked at a place called Nikea. 27:36 okay, ikea. This is their actual office building. I just needed to show you a picture of this crazy because it's so absurd to me. Everything about this office drives me insane and it makes me feel so uneasy when I look at it. Just it looks so efficient. It is so like and there's those little balconies, those little tiny bow. You think the windows are eye level or do you think those are no yeah? Those are middle 28:02 because you see the doorway over there at the end for some reason. Those small little balconies yeah that aren't connected yeah. They're tiny little dinky balconies yeah dinky balconies. We're looking place and so you go smoke. It looks like it looks like we would get built in the nineties is like a futuristic building yeah. You know you're right. It's a cube. It's like a it's a big flat thing and then there's like runner windows along the but they're not full height windows. They're clearly like all 28:31 I mean they look probably two or three feet tall. The windows do at most maybe one foot yeah yeah and and it's like I can remember maybe one, maybe one and a half feet, maybe one and a quarter on. I mean I'm ball parking it if I'm gonna I'm probably one foot five and a quarter inches maybe maybe, something like yeah. What do you think? I don't know. It doesn't remind me of the here's building in Springfield to 29:01 it's got that big like tower on the back of it. Otherwise it'd be just a block and honestly I wouldn't hate it as much if it was just a block, but we stop looking at the clock. Stop looking at the clock. Stop looking at the building. Is the building the interesting part of this story or what don't look at the clock? Look at the block. uh No, I just I just needed you to see this because it stresses me out so much. It really does. Okay, we can stop talking about it. We don't have to talk about it anymore. Okay, okay, we don't have to talk about it. Okay, 29:30 all right. I you would stop talking about this building. Okay, so he worked at Nikea. Nikea is like a little thirty minutes into a story that's going nowhere. It's like a small. I don't know what to call it a chemical firm yeah, and so they they were said their tag line was researching for a brighter future. Yeah, so now it changed things, but and in the sixty side or maybe I guess yeah. This company was uh 30:00 or this company was founded in a I don't know what you this was founded but throughout the 80s the 70s and 80s it was all chemical and they made a few dozen million a year they weren't like hugely successful but they were like a profitable company they were doing well there right whatever but they weren't a company that was on the radar for this technology okay ah but Shuji Nakamura he was just a technician who worked there 30:29 but he's always kind of a tinker. He grew up being someone who played with like Tinker toys and did stuff like that and he went. got his bachelor's degree. He started working at the Nikea Corporation. I think we're going end up needing a lot more of those people because of the if robotics really do take off the way that they hope they do yeah. We're going to need more people with those hand eye coordination skills. Why is we're need to repair those robots? Well, I can't the robots repair the other robots 30:59 that eventually so he worked in this section of nikea that they called the junk room and it was just we just put a bunch of junk in here and we let these guys think around a little yeah and see if they can come up with anything and so he just would sit around building stuff in the junk room and one day say his name again so he knock him our suji suji knock him suji knock him are okay and so in nineteen eighty eight he kind of well for years before nineteen eighty eight he been 31:29 dabbling with this blue light problem. And he started to think, I think I could probably solve this. Um, and so he went to the founder of the company, uh, a guy by the name of no boo Ogawa. Uh, and he said, Hey, I need, I don't know, 500 million yen to try to figure out this blue light problem. That's 3 million us dollars. Okay. Um, and the guy was like, sure. Take, take this 500 million yen to the junk room and see what you can do with it. And so 31:57 he's like the first thing I'm going to have to do is go to Florida. Is that okay and he's like I don't care and so he flies to Florida. I already told you go to the junk room go. That's what we call it here. God just go to the junk room, the junk room honestly cool youth group name. Is it the junk yard? Maybe the junk yard, the junk. Hey, do you ever jug yard wars? Junkyard wars was so cool. So 32:23 so it was definitely not an indictment of our over consumer culture that we just have. We just have these massive areas of land with so much junk as crazy. uh So in eighty eight he's been a whole year in Florida, ah mastering this technology called Moc VD, which stands for metal organic chemical vapor deposition. I knew that which the big problem 32:52 that they ran into is they figured out uh that they could potentially make this type of light, the blue light, if they had the right material. But the problem is they just couldn't get the structure pure enough. But there was this new technology in the 80s that came on called the MOCVD that can create really, really good uh pure crystalline lattice. But it's the only thing that could do it. And so he's like, I'm going to fly to Florida to a place that does this. I'm just going to spend a year there learning under these people. 33:22 And so he expected it to be this great experience. He gets there and he just gets bullied by everyone who works there ah because like you're not that smart because he doesn't have a PhD and he has no published papers under his belt. And so they're like, you're not you're not special. And so they're like, here, we've got a broken one. You can go to the junk room and you could play with our broken machine. And that's what he did for a year. He every day would come in and he would take this thing apart and put it back together until he like understood it like the back of his hand. 33:51 the machine and how it functioned. uh And meanwhile, everybody, he sat alone at lunch, everybody made fun of him. bullied him. MOCVD. It's essentially like a reactor that could create with any organic material could crystallize it. Okay. And it could make the most uh pure crystals at the time and even to this day. And so he ah flew back home and was like, well, I'm going to need one of those. I'm going to make it. I spent the year just making it over and over again. And so he 34:21 put together all the junk that they had the junk room to make his own like makeshift MLCVD reactor. Um, and long story short over the next, uh, four years, he just tried and tried every single day, uh, to create this material. Um, okay. And eventually, uh, he had, um, a very, very dim blue light that he was able to create with it, but it was not, he comes running out of the junk room, guys, guys. And they're like, 34:50 Uh huh, he's like, the blue light! And they're like, I don't see it. 34:58 I maybe there's maybe it's a light. I can't. I'm not sure I see anything. 35:11 Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things. I learned last night. If you like this show, we would love to see in our Patreon. It's a great way to financially support the show. We don't make money from this. It just helps us to pay the people who do make money from this. Like Alex and Robert, her editor and maybe one day, one day me and Tim, maybe one day, know, but only if you join, only if you join, we can't wait. We can't get paid until you pay. Can't feed Tim's kid until you join. He's so uh 35:54 bad. He rebuilt the reactor and the problem is he gets back and when he gets back the sun took over the company. Okay, it sounds like this is a colossal waste of money. You're never going to figure this out because his son is just the CEO. He's not the tinkerer. He went to a conference and at the conference, this guy was like yeah blue lights never going to happen. We're never going to make it that a thing. You know what else was never going to happen? The guy at AT &T told me unlimited text messages was never going to happen. That's a real thing. I remember that 36:21 the guy was like now they made too much money on the same with data. They'll never have unlimited data yeah, which he was right about that yeah. We don't have a little bit of data yeah. Well yeah, you have unlimited. It's fake unlimited yeah yeah. I wonder yeah, that's interesting. I wonder yeah, that was a good rabbit trail that yeah we don't have time. I'm going to look it up on good for you and so he shuts the program down. He's like he's like we're not going to do anymore and I'm not exaggerating when I say he would write little letters 36:51 put it in suji's mailbox. That was like hey, stop doing that and she would go exactly. He'd rip it up and throw in the trash and just kept working for two years. I don't know why he didn't get fired like genuinely. He just kept doing it. Yeah, your boss is like stop and he's like and he's like I'm signing your check this week, but I expect you to stop next stop. Okay, sounds good. Whatever you say boss 37:25 quit pay it fire fire. I can't believe he didn't get fired because for two years he just kept working. That means somewhere in the organization. Someone was like he's going to pull off. He's going to forget it. I dim a boss. He fought the dim got a little light and if you turn all the other lights off, you can kind of see it all the other lights off and then you turn off the light in your brain to you can kind of see it like I see it. You kind of see it. If you think about seeing it yeah and long story short, 37:54 He ended up, he used, uh, uh, let me see if I can find the exact material, gallium nitrate, um, indium gallium nitrate. So you had to create a compound, um, that had a large enough band gap that he could then crystallize and get enough energy. Um, someone, someone else at a different lab had discovered that gallium nitrate was going to be the way to go, but they couldn't get it, uh, pure enough. And they actually tried firing a laser at it. It didn't work. He was like, what if I just make it really hot? 38:23 and so he tried that and it worked yeah. So he made it do fifty foot shops a day. He's like what if I just hey, I'm going to make this I'm to make this thing hotter. He gave it the the princess diaries makeover uh so in in late ninety two he discovered it. He figured it out and he made a blue light bulb that was a hundred times brighter than any previous prototype and this 38:52 blew the world up. He went to Saint Louis. He's like, know where I know exactly where I'm going. He goes to Saint Louis, does this conference the world's fair. He still thinks it's 1904. Hello, Tartaria. 39:09 just downtown so and these like take investors, you shine this blue light and the tech investors are like cats. They're like 39:18 no he they run on all fours. He does his whole presentation talking about how it works and then he turns the blue light on in broad daylight in a room with all the lights on and you can see it and he gets a standing ovation. Everybody stands up and they're cheering their hooting and hollering. It's like if you we've talked about before. Have you watched the iPhone release? Yes, it's the same on the same looking back. You're like what, but like and maybe that's the problem. Maybe we just haven't had enough of those moments lately. Yeah, 39:45 you know we haven't come up with anything really. You think that's why Elon Musk is so bitter is because we're not giving him standing ovations for his fake robots. Well, it's because everyone's at home on their internet. Yeah, that's why was okay. That's what I'm saying. Do you think that standing in a room full of people seeing the first blue light meant something more than actually just being in a room seeing the blue light? Yes, absolutely. Now, if you were in that room, there's ninety nine other robots. It's just you and ninety nine robots. 40:11 and there's never been a blue light before and then one of the robots on stage goes blue light. Do they make you think that means they do they cheer me on as much as the they make you sing. How great is our God before hand? I sing the God one sing a God one. You're doing your present. Oh great is our God saying with the out great is our God. 40:41 and all great. How great they recognize? What's the noise you made? They just make noises randomly to sound more human. Yeah, okay, we're going to pass the how great is our God like this rudimentary understanding of human sounds. So we're going to pass the pay 41:11 but that's what I'm saying. Being like being in the room. Yeah, what I'm saying is if I have a hundred people cheering for me or a hundred robots cheering for me, yeah, I'm just as excited about the attention like my dad and brother were recounting the game. They were at the thirteen second game. Yeah, the chiefs incredible on real. Yeah, that's a crazy moment. You know and uh and I remember that night. I almost broke my hand because we were at a bar 41:40 is also a grill, don't worry, bar and grill and that was a rule at a v. I was at the grill part of the bar. That was a rule at the college who went to was that you couldn't go to a restaurant like it had to be a at least fifty fifty. Yeah, you couldn't be a if you went to a bar that didn't serve food. That was against the bar. Yeah, you can't be yeah. You could go to apple bees because they serve food. There was an and grill. They did balls. Yeah, so we were hanging out at the end grill and uh 42:11 I almost broke my thumb. I I remember and like being around other people yeah made that moment was now I want to find out later that all those people row robots. I think that would damage my psyche. What that's just me. I guess I watched that I watched that game completely alone and I remember it very clearly yeah and it was a very excited or being alone. Yeah, it's a very exciting night for me. 42:39 watching that game anyways. Whatever we don't have to talk about how lonely I am that night when that historic mo was happening. You were just alone in your living room yeah, but and like when when you did you stand up and cheer and go yes and then you just kind of looked around yeah and I did that. I did that when the bears won this weekend. I laid on my living room floor and I cried by myself yeah. 43:04 it was a very special moment. It just went to a different level of sad. There's tears of joy. I know, but it just reached a level where I was like oh, I was trying to do a little bit of a bit and you were like I'm trying to be sad. I'm not sad. I was a is honestly should be honestly one of the the problem in my life should be said anyways. 43:32 um So he demos it, it goes to market. It just freaking run it rips. It just runs because here's the thing. Now you have RGB so now you can make white light. So now you can sell lights and homes. Yeah. But now you also can do screens. You can do lights like these. You can do the cool keyboards. You can do all the things. Everybody was constantly like, man, I these keyboards had cool rainbow colors behind. I mean, there was a while where 43:58 everything became a le everything became a those little and and like people would buy that stuff like those. What's that? You know what you know talking about? It looks like a flower pot and all the like the white thing and the tips light up yeah well. That was that wasn't uh that was that's fiber. That's not led. I understand, but the light is led right. I guess yeah. guess the fiber bottom had to be led. I guess I guess I don't know, so I'm over it now. I'm 44:27 I had a good mood for like four minutes and it's gone because you play devil's advocate and he won. So this goes to market. It's huge. It makes nike hundreds of millions of dollars. ah The company, the industry blows up and by the mid two thousands it's an eighty billion dollar industry. Right. The industry. What's really interesting is in two thousand two ah they said that two percent of homes 44:55 had shifted from incandescent light to LED and by 2002, 2002. Okay. And then in 2020, that number is up to 46%. So still not the majority. What's actually, what's really interesting though is looking at the amount of energy that incandescent lights use in contrast to LED lights, that if we completely shifted all of our incandescent use, both at home and commercial across the nation, they said that that would be the equivalent to 45:24 taking half the cars off the road in terms of co to use in the world or what is crazy even the bulb in my living room like yeah, because there's a smart bulb in here as well. The smart bulb I have in my living room lamp is the same bowl I put in during cobit like I bought. It was like and it was like hundred bucks that I spent during cove it to get all these these lights yeah and I was like day has a hundred dollars for lights. That's crazy. I've been using them for 45:54 nonstop every day. The average LED for five years. The average LED can run for 100,000 hours before it dies. That's crazy. And they use 5 % of the energy and they actually 70 % of the energy that it uses is emitted as light and only 30 % as heat. So it's like significantly more efficient. It works better. It's brighter and we get the full color spectrum. Yeah. And so what is happening with those with LEDs like on your phone where you can change the colors. 46:22 They're just using the RGB. So they just have the three colors and they just shift the RGBs. um And obviously you can have so many of those LEDs so close together that it's like a screen. And then you can just change the colors really simply. Wow. Right. Very wild. Well, Nikea was like, Shooji Nakamura. Oh my gosh. You didn't listen to me. You ripped up all my letters and you made the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Thank you so much for your service to the company. 46:52 We're going to thank you. uh We got a special bonus for you for your hard work. And so he opens it up. It's a check for 180 dollars. No, it's a check for 180 dollars. No way. And he continues working at Nikea throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s. um And he gets a couple of promotions, but nothing that's like anywhere near the value of what he provided to Nikea. 47:21 And so in the early 2000s, he's now one of the most sought after people in the industry. Everybody wants him to work for them. He's constantly getting job offers from the states. He has behind Nike at Nike. like, no, I made $180. I'm going to stay. Yeah. Behind Nike is back. He, Nike had this policy where it's like no one employed at Nike. It was allowed to publish a paper because they like, these are our trade secrets. 47:49 And so he published them under Mary Shelley. Yeah, behind. 47:57 behind he published him under the name F Scott Fitzgerald and everyone's like I thought he was dead. I don't think I died. I call me there today and was like. Do you know that F Scott Fitzgerald might have stolen all his work from his wife and tell him your stranger things theory? Yeah, the time okay. We could talk about it. The theory is that the wife of one of the Duffer brothers was a rider on the first two seasons and then they got a divorce and 48:25 that rest of it kind of. I think our show started going downhill when we got married because we started letting our wives right. I think it's because we 48:42 you can really tell when it happened. I think that show it's really fell off with their started writing, uh so he's getting headhunted now because he's published papers. I agree to him. Wow! This show really is much better now that we're married. 49:05 so crazy. Speaking of marriage, our relationship is so healthy because of our commitment and subscription to better help. That's better H e l p dot com slash till in slash markets, slash markets. There we go. So uh so he's constantly getting head hunted. Yeah, Japan at the time had a paw had a program 49:31 where you could earn a PhD without going to school as long as you had enough published papers. So he earns a PhD from the amount of published peer reviewed papers. Yeah. So he becomes a PhD. All these companies from the US are like, Hey, we'll actually pay you what you're worth. And then he eventually was like, that sounds pretty good. So in the early 2000s, he leaves and he, uh, Nikea immediately tries to sue him because they're like, Oh, you're taking our trade secrets to one of our competitors. Uh, this ends up being a big legal battle. And then I'm assuming 50:00 somebody in the States got in his ear and was like, yeah, you should sue them actually, because that's jacked up that they only gave you $180. And so at some point when he was in the States, that kind of he realized and he went and he sued them. He sued them for I think it was 20 million was the original suit and took it to court and court heard the case and they said, yeah, I think you're right. I think that Nikea does owe you money. 50:28 and I put 20 million is not enough. They owe you a hundred and thirty million dollars. Oh my gosh. And Ikea was like, hold on. We're going to we're going to we're going to know it was a misprint. It was supposed to be eighteen hundred. Yeah, I think I think we were supposed to give him. don't like I don't like the number you picked. So they appealed and they appealed again and they appealed again. And eventually they settled outside of court and they gave they gave him eight point one million dollars, which barely covered his legal fees. And so he pretty much did all that time in court for nothing. 50:58 which is kind of crazy to me like I'm sure they were counter suits. I'm sure it's something you can't get out of, but like if I am him, I am dedicating my life to crushing these people, first of all I am him. 51:13 So he now works at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He's been there for a few decades yeah, and he is working so Adam. You were in Santa Barbara with us. When did we go to Santa Barbara? You skipped that. Oh, it was my birthday. Yeah, I was alone at home. You were alone at home, crying on your floor. Yeah, because the bears on my friends were riding bikes rain and a train. You didn't run a train. I remember that trip. I remember everything that I was for you 51:43 because every five minutes I was texting you being like wish you were here buddy. That actually is what actually I don't like anyway, but it's actually here. I wish I was there too anyways. Why didn't you go so long? My thirtieth birthday, it's a long so like a big deal. Yeah, I know I flew you out to California for your thirty. Yeah, I'm aware. Sometimes I think about how you skip my thirtieth birthday and I lay in my bed on my living room floor and I cry, but you know who's there my wife and she sits with me and she goes it's okay. 52:12 and the chemicals in my brain go uh human touch human connection and like I think I was gonna you know, don't yeah I well when I'm crying on my living room floor about the fact that I didn't go to your thirtieth birthday, I turned on the two thousand five stellar card classic. You got me and Jesus and I'm like through the fight. You will never be alone. 52:40 and I sit there. I'm like man. I wish there was a me yeah, so every morning when I'm in the shower, I think about the fact that you didn't go to my thirtieth birthday party and I sob and I sob and I picture you getting shot in the face. 53:04 and that's how I start every day. So anyways, he's working on these new LEDs that are like much, much smaller band gap and what it's going to do is it allows them to be ultraviolet. They so they already have ultraviolet. He's working on x ray uv or LEDs. Oh, he's still working on things right now. Yes. And so okay, what's the point of x ray? So what's really interesting here is if there's a few applications, but one of the leading applications right now, we have a problem in computing 53:33 where we've reached the physical limit of how close together we can make the components in a computer chip. Because the way we make the components is we shoot it with a little bit of light to cut the material. But we can't get that light any smaller. And so if we can use X-ray light, we can get it smaller. And then we can make those components tighter together because the light's smaller. Think of it like the blade on a saw. We've got the smallest possible blade in the light, and he's trying to find a way to make essentially a smaller blade. 54:02 by using X-ray light. He's also working in a similar capacity with this to try to solve nuclear fission. So he's working on a couple big things. I watched an interview of him in Santa Barbara at the University of California. They were walking outside, you know, like one of those dramatic interviews. And he was swinging his arms like this. So I know he's really smart. 54:24 I just had to bring up the fact that he was and I know he's really smart because of that. He walks like this and he's outside walking just like this. Yeah, so we're trying to figure out nuclear fission right now and if I can figure out the x-rays like me really small, it'll be a small light, a small like they can't believe they only gave me a hundred and eighty dollars for the small light. But anyways, yeah blue lights burning all of our eyes and we can't sleep because of any of it and he doesn't feel bad at all. So he's working on x ray light and nuclear fission. Yeah, yeah, that's what he's doing now. Wow! 54:54 That's Suji Nakamura. So next time next time you're on your phone late at night and you're squinting your eyes are burning say thank you Suji. Say fiddle off. Hey that episode was about an inventor and another inventor we cover with Stanley Meyer who invented a car that could run on water allegedly and then he was allegedly maybe taken out by some nefarious people like the oil industry. So 55:19 Check out that episode. If you like this podcast, please share with somebody. Tell somebody about the show. Help us grow it. Help us get the word out. We enjoy doing the show. We want to keep doing it. And another way for you to support the show is to join us on Patreon. You can join us and get next week's episode right now. And you join the discord, all the fun stuff. Anyway, we'll see you next week on things over last night.