 And I'm Adam Navas. And welcome to our real conversation about our featured program. And this week our featured program is called Nikola Tesla, The Forgotten Inventor. And you can find that program on our website, link below to follow along with it if you haven't done that already. Or you can listen along at the link. We have it on YouTube. And yeah, hopefully you've already listened to it. Maybe you haven't. That's okay. You can go back and listen to it then. But today, right now, we're going to talk about that program. Adam, what do you know about Nikola Tesla? Well, when I hear Tesla, I think of these cars, these electric cars. And I think of, I don't know if this is accurate, that ball at museums that you touch and your hair stands on end. Electricity, that's what I think. I don't know if that is accurate. I think maybe you think of it because we do associate Tesla with electricity. Yeah. So maybe that's what your association is with those little balls. Hey, you asked what I associate. You never said what's accurate. Well, I'm just confirming that it may not be accurate. I'm confirming you don't know what you're talking about. That's what I hear you say. But Tesla actually has nothing to do with those Tesla cars. Right. Just the name. Yeah. I have to say, I obviously have heard this program, but I did not actually know a lot about Tesla before. I recognized his name, but I really didn't know his story. And just reading through this program, a couple of things really struck me. One is that he was clearly a genius. Yeah. Very, very smart. Yeah. Way before his time and misunderstood. Right? Yeah. So it's a little sad. What if he had been born 50 years later or 100 years later? What more could we have learned from him? I also learned that he worked with Thomas Edison, which is the person I associate most with the light bulb and lights, but apparently that's a little bit of something not true. I think there was like a team of people, but he gets all the credit, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that Tesla worked with him and there was, I honestly, I'm not an engineer in any way. My mind is not made up like an engineer's mind, but I guess there were like two sides of this battle and Tesla wanted to use AC Current and Edison wanted to use DC Current. And then you put them together and you get that famous rock band. No, I'm just joking. AC DC? Yeah. Okay. There we go. No, but so Edison said that AC Current is not safe and he did everything he could said. This program says just stop Tesla from using his idea and producing that current and making it common. Right. And then now it's what we use today. Yeah. So, I thought that was really interesting. I thought it was, I mean, I agree with all those things. The thing that made me really think was going back to what you said about what if he had been born in a different situation or in a different time. I think that so, so much of what happens in life is just, I don't call it luck, call it circumstance, but if you have someone who's fighting against you versus someone who's like lifting you up. Right. Well, someone who's well-funded fighting against you, right, he's already powerful and you're not independently wealthy. Right. There are dynamics at play like, we like to think that if you're really smart and you work really hard, you'll be successful, but that's just not true. There are really, really smart people who never get a chance to fully, I don't know, contribute. Right. They don't have the resources maybe to go to school or to continue their schooling or to fund their experiments or whatever, which is what happened to Tesla, right? He had this benefactor, this person who gave him a bunch of money, but then as he got older, then his funds sort of dried out, nobody was giving him money anymore and he had all of these ideas and no money to do anything with them. This reminds me of the program about the runner Jesse Owens because he had a similar experience where he was very talented, but because of the political and social dynamics in the 1930s and 40s, he never really got a good, I don't want to say money is everything, but he didn't make a lot of money and just didn't have all those opportunities, so you may want to check out that program if you liked this program. Yeah, we'll link it around here at the top. But I think that there's a lot of maybe people who are watching this who can listen to this program and relate in the sense that maybe they had an idea or maybe they currently have an idea and are just looking to connect with somebody else who can help take that idea to the next level. You know, I wonder though if that sort of thing is, I mean, it's still a barrier, right? Definitely a barrier, but there's still, there's like, you know, microloans, right? Like Kiva. I wonder if that helps a little bit where you say, like, oh, I have this idea, but I don't have money, but I can get this microloan from Kiva. I don't know, you know, because there's a lot of different crowdfunding. Yeah, that's a good question. If Nikola Tesla were alive, would he be on Kickstarter? Probably. Probably would be somebody who's on Kickstarter saying, hey, I've got this new form of electricity. The first, you get a free t-shirt if you help support my idea. I wonder if there, I mean, maybe there already is the next Nikola Tesla on Kickstarter. Maybe. There's so many, you know, there's so many people in the world. Yeah. It's so many amazing ideas, and yeah, I think it's fascinating. I was going to say, so speaking of the next Nikola Tesla, bringing it back to when you were talking about how you associate the car, the Tesla car with Nikola Tesla. So obviously it's named after him, right? But the person who is in charge of that company, is it called Tesla? Yeah. Is the company Tesla or just the car? Anyway, it's Elon Musk. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And he is, is he South African? I think he is. I'm not sure. He's very wealthy, extremely wealthy. I think he may be recently, now depending on when you're watching this, he may be the richest person in the world. Yeah, I believe it. He's one of the guys in charge of like SpaceX. They sent that rocket to space just, I don't know, last year. It got the electric cars. He's all about electricity, which I mean, I imagine that Tesla is one of his, one of his idols, right? Yeah, inspiration. Is inspiration, yes. So, I mean, and he's done amazing things, right? Yeah, he's a smart dude, too. He is, yeah. He's also like kind of a strange person. Yeah, I wonder if that is... I mean, I don't want to get this video taken off YouTube. No, no, no. And we're not, we're not criticizing him. Right. What we're saying is, you can be, there are many, there is a pattern of people who, shall we use a, the phrase, think outside the box, right? Yeah, that's a good one. Which means not normal thinking, creative, very creative thinking, who also act outside the box in other ways. Right. And when those people have lots and lots of money, they have less accountability. They're not trying to, you know, he's the boss of the company. Well, even though you have accountability, you just have the ability. Right. To do whatever you want. Right. Like, who's gonna, you know, say no when you have a weird idea and a million dollars. Right. Or a billion dollars. A trillion. No, just a billion. Nobody has a trillion yet. Yet. Yeah, just give us a year or two. You say we're gonna have a trillion? Not us. I mean, us as humans. Yeah, there will be someone someday, probably in our lifetime, who, who owns a, owns a country. See, that's too much money. Anyway, we're taking a different program. That's a different program. Yeah, that is that would be a good program though. Too much money. How many people own? Oh, I don't even I can't even get my brain around that. Well, if you were Elon Musk, and you had a billion dollars, and you were super smart. I don't know. I would just sit on a beach somewhere. I'm not that ambitious. You give me a billion dollars. I'm like, that's why you don't have a billion dollars. Probably. That's the one reason why I don't have a billion dollars. The only reason really. No, but anyway, this program was like, it was super interesting. It's, it's sad to me that such a brilliant person was basically forgotten. Like, and he has such an influence. I mean, if you have the design for the electricity model that we use literally all around the world, yeah, and you are not associate like it's not called Tesla electricity or whatever. Right. I mean, yeah, I mean, but here we are talking about him. So he's got some some recognition. Yeah, from from spotlight English from spotlight English. We recognize you Nikola Tesla. Good job. We recognize you. Yeah. So I would love to hear from our listeners or viewers. I don't know why I say listeners listening to what do you know about Nikola Tesla? You know, um, what kind of ideas do you have? Yeah, like, or are we are we missing you? Are you are you the next Tesla? Or do you know someone who you think you know what this person had a similar thing where they did an amazing thing and don't get enough credit? Yeah, or what they did. And because we know that there are tens of thousands of people who have contributed significantly to our lives in big and small ways and don't get the credit that they deserve. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we would love if you would join the conversation below. Excuse me. If you would join the conversation below, leave a comment, check out those those other programs about Nikola Tesla and you said Jesse Oh, Jesse Owens. Yep. Jesse Owens. And yeah, let us know what you think. Make sure you subscribe to this channel. Click the little bell so that you never miss any of our videos. Check out the playlists we have Jesse Owens got to be in Jesse Owens's program has got to be in the sports playlist. We have a sports playlist that's available. We have a lot of playlists that you can check through depending on what your interests are. Maybe we should make a science playlist, including people like Tesla. I'm sure we could do that. Well, we can do that. I know because I do it. I'm just saying I'm sure we have enough content to fill it. Yes. Yeah, definitely. You know, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. And thanks for joining us. We've really enjoyed this conversation and we'll see you again next time.