#480 – An Interview with Ben Krasnow, 8 years on

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release February 16th, 2020. Episode 480 sponsored by Screaming Circuits. An interview with Ben Krasnow, 8 years on. Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: And I'm Ben Krasnow of Applied Science.

Chris Gammell: Welcome back, Ben. It's been a couple years.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: It has, in fact, eight, apparently.

Chris Gammell: Eight years, yeah. I mean, we have watched and marveled from afar as you've made tons of amazing YouTube videos. I think in the meantime, you've actually named your channel, which I don't think it was called Applied Science at the time. But it's been fun to watch from afar.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: That is interesting. In fact, if people are curious about kind of like the behind the scenes or how YouTube has changed over eight years, it actually has changed quite a bit. So there might be some interesting things to talk about there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, yeah. How has that changed? I mean, it's obviously not your full-time job. You have a regular job still. Well, maybe not regular. That's probably, you know, you have an interesting full-time job. But how has YouTube itself changed?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, YouTube, back eight years ago, most of the people on YouTube were doing it just because it was a fun way to spend time. And these days, if someone starts a YouTube channel, they're pretty much thinking about how they're going to, you know, get paid for doing this, basically.

Chris Gammell: Right. Am I an influencer yet?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, right. And so there is a lot of that. And there's actually just very few people that put together channels just because they want to. Like most people do consider it sort of an entertainment avenue that they would get paid for. So that's kind of changed the dynamic a bit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Does that change on the, like being approached as a creator as well?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I've never gone to VidCon, but I think I'll probably break down and have to do it at some point.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, this seems kind of fun. There's lots of other personalities there and stuff like that.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's run by the Vlogbrothers guys, right? Hank and John Green. That's right. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of theirs. Yeah. Well, that's cool. And then, I mean, from a, I guess from a reach perspective now too, you have what, 600,000 plus viewers. So that has to change things as well.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. It's actually, I always try to cut the balance between doing really niche kind of esoteric stuff and then, you know, generally accessible kind of more sort of general science topics. Yeah. I think it's a fairly good balance. Like I don't want to abandon the niche stuff because that's kind of what I like the most too.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: But then I do get a lot of comments where they're like, I have no idea what you're saying, but I watch it anyway. And I guess that's good too, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think that is great. I mean, like you don't know what you're not going to like when you're going to need something. But I've had points where I've recommended to someone like, oh, well, you know, Applied Science made a video about this. You should go check it out. And like, I wouldn't have had that context to just be like, you know, oh, well, you can go and dehydrate caffeine or whatever that thing was. You know, like these just like very kind of weird, weird out there experiments that you run that might actually have application. You never know. It's always going to be like a recommendation engine for someone else, you know, that might help kind of connect the dots.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. No, it's true. I actually do get messages from folks at research labs or whatever that are very happy to see like a technique actually demonstrated. Like with this latest one with Vantablack, you know, I don't think there's ever been like a video of someone creating it. And if you're trying to replicate this experiment, just having a video with all the details in it is super helpful. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, and actually that would be a great lead in because one of the things that I really admire about your channel is that you go into patents and you go into papers and you try and replicate these things. And that is definitely like part of the scientific process. And yet I would never think to go in to my lab at work and like replicate these, you know, things that are meant to be replicated. It's part of the it's part of the actual like scientific process. So like how does that end up impacting your work?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I probably will never do topics of health care on my channel just because that's a little too close to work. And sort of the implicit deal I've always had with with, you know, Google and now Verily is that if I don't talk about things that are work related, then my channel is my business and I can do with it whatever I want. So as long as we don't get too close to health care, that would pretty much be the only topic I wouldn't cover on my channel.

Chris Gammell: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, like the so so like the replication of not not of your work experience, but I mean, of actually like so you you often refer to the patents and the papers that you read that inspire the experiments that you do on your channel and the replication of of actual like like the Vantablack, like you said. So this is a recent video you did. You go and replicate the exact setup and things like that. What inspires you to just go and replicate it in general and not. Oh, I see. You know what I mean? Like it's I guess I think about it like, oh, I try and make this thing, but I wouldn't think to go and just replicate the same setups like that. And that's a really good starting point.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Actually, yeah, it's it's it's it's easier. It's actually the so the challenge is that coming up like like imagine that you're, you know, cooking something in the kitchen to just go total free form without a recipe is actually pretty challenging. And so having at least a recipe to start with takes a lot of the you know, at least it gets the variables narrowed down to, you know, a few orders of magnitude as opposed to, you know, 10. And so definitely starting with a paper is more of a just an easy way to at least think, well, you know, at least they got it to work once, hopefully, or you'd think so. Hope so. And then you can kind of modify it from there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so for people will link in the Vantablack thing. But what is Vantablack real quick?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: It's it's the darkest material known to man. And so it's like it's like it looks like you're looking into a black hole. Like it's actually great for for film and photography, because if you adjust your camera, even normally, it looks like zero pixels like they're all zeros. So it looks like you Photoshop the hole in the image when you take a picture of this stuff. And it's it's actually had a huge you know, it's been very successful on the Internet because it makes for these very like captivating images. But making it requires fairly extensive lab equipment. And that's what I showed in the video.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, so then let's talk about so you have this Vantablack idea, but where where are you actually sourcing the papers in the first place? So like what what is it that like made you go and look for that in the first place? Are you just stumbling upon these papers? Are you going out and trying to find them or how are you sourcing your material?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, that's that's this is an interesting one. And so Vantablack has been kind of on the scene for like a few years. And the thing that initially made me want to do it is that there's this agreement between the makers of Vantablack and an artist. And they gave him an exclusive license to use their Vantablack paint in his art exhibits. And there was like this big deal in the art community. Like no one else could have the paint except for this one guy. And it was, you know, it was very controversial. It's kind of stupid, of course, but it's funny because like no one else can have like the blackest black. Like only this one artist was entitled to use it. So there was a lot of pushback and everything. And I thought, you know, I'll show people how to make it in their own garage if they have dedicated enough time and lab equipment. So that was kind of the original sort of inspiration. And then in the meantime, these researchers at MIT released this sort of easier process even. And they claimed it was even blacker than Vantablack, which we still don't really know. But that was the claim.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I think I found it on just, you know, popular media even. Like it came up in, you know, a hacker news feed or something.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that sounds likely. So you read that and I read that and I go, oh, that's interesting. Look, they're being kind of buttheads about like not giving this thing away. And you go and you look at it like, no, I can do that.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh, absolutely. That was a great lead in. I was like, oh, this is perfect. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then you said on the video too that like it is tough to measure as well. And so that's like another interesting thing that I've noticed about your replication of experiments and stuff is that it's tough to replicate everything exactly the same or how it's published as well. Like some of the ins and outs of how things are published kind of can make it tough to completely replicate at home.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, for sure. It's nice to have a large technical viewer base. So in this case, the person who actually published the paper at NIST that measured all these different Vantablack materials emailed me and said, well, if you'd like me to explain how I built the measuring sphere that we used in that paper, I'll send it to you.

Chris Gammell: Oh, my God. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, because it probably gets passed around, right? Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: And I linked to his paper and everything and he gave me the details of how they built that measuring sphere. So yeah, it helps to have like a lot of technical people watching. Also, it's a little bit nerve wracking because every single mistake will be discovered within, you know, an hour or two of it being posted.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, that is kind of the problem with the focus of so many eyeballs. Does it end up impacting you? Like, do you think twice about like hitting the publish button or anything or are you kept pretty steady?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: A little bit. I mean, I, you know, I like to be correct and everything. And so what I've found is that it's usually better to not guess. Like, you know, I basically, I don't like script my stuff. And so I, every single thing I've ever said on YouTube is unscripted. And then if, you know, if you're talking to someone like we are in conversation, I might say something that's not perfectly correct just because, you know, we're just talking. Right. But that starts to not fly so well when you have, you know, a big enough channel where people kind of expect it to be almost like reference material as opposed to just, just chatting.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. It's like, when does that cross over from one to the other? And it's, you know, and then, and then it's also there for not all time, but you know, you've got 10 years. Well, it pretty much is.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: 10 years of material.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No, I still get people correcting. No, definitely mistakes. Even from years ago, I'm still getting corrected on. So yeah, I've learned to basically be a little bit more tight lipped in the, in the talking. Yeah. If there's this uncertainty, maybe cut that out or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's kind of unfortunate because that, that's kind of, it's kind of harsh your vibe a little bit.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Some people script. I mean, that's, that's what a lot of people tend to do, but I think it just comes off better unscripted. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Chris Gammell: That's great. I mean, and so, okay, well, let's give a little more historical context since the last time you've been on the show, at least, which was episode 75. If people don't know. So Ben was one of our first guests. I think it was like you and Jerry Ellsworth and Alan Yates and like a bunch of other people that ended up all being in Jeff Kaiser and like you ended up all being coworkers. So what have you been up to since 2011, Ben?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. So yeah, 2011. So, and I think we were talking to, it may have been before I started at Valve. So in 2011 or end of 2011, I started working at Valve and that was the joke around the office was that to work there, to work at Valve hardware, you had to be on the amp hour, which was a hundred percent true for like half a year, I think. That's great. Or something like that. Or maybe.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we kept saying we were going to charge either, you know, Gabe or Jerry, you know, for recruiting everyone, but we never got any royalties. So, although I did end up doing some contract work there. So that, I guess that paid itself off at some point.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh, there you go.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: And it completed the prophecy that you had to be at least somehow involved with the amp hour. There you go. A little bit on the show, maybe running the show. Yeah. So yeah, so I was at Valve for a while and then in 2014 left and joined Google X. And when I joined there, they wouldn't tell me what I'd be working on. It was a total mystery. They were back in the super secrecy days, but it turned out to be healthcare projects. And that continued on to be a separate spin out company called Verily, which is a, you know, majority owned subsidiary company of Alphabet. And that's where I am now.

Chris Gammell: Wow. How did that conversation go? Like who, when they're calling to recruit you to like Google X, I mean, obviously they have Google in the name, so that's something, but like not telling you anything you're working on. Like how did that go?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, it was pretty annoying. They even had like a non-disclosure agreement, which I signed. And then I said, okay, well now tell me what I'll be working on. And they said, oh no, no, we still don't tell anything. This one is, they told me that this was like the ultra confidential project that even like the regular confidential ones were soft limits.

Chris Gammell: Double secret probation.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I had a feeling it might be Google Glass or self-driving cars, which were kind of the only public projects back then.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: But it turned out to be healthcare. So I've actually had the same role and the same group the entire time I've been there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You said this is one of your longest running gigs. So that's...

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I've been there close to six years. Wow. And that is longer than I've worked for anyone, including myself, actually.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's pretty crazy. And particularly crazy in like, you know, large FANG, F-A-A-N-G, although I think it's no longer FANG, it'd be what, FANA, because it's Alphabet instead of Google. Oh, right. But like a lot of people move in and out of those, you know, large tech companies. And also it's just Silicon Valley. So like there's just a lot of movement. So how has that been with being there for six years?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: It's pretty good. I mean, it's also like seeing a company grow up. So when I, I mean, Google X has always been big, but the healthcare effort within it has been much, much smaller. So when I joined, you know, essentially the science team or whatever, the science part of the healthcare aspect was only 20 people. And now it's about a thousand. And so it's been, yeah. So it's been fun to sort of be part of that growth. And it does feel like kind of growing up with a startup in a lot of ways.

Chris Gammell: Right. Without the crash and burn likelihood. Rather.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I'd like to hope so. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, just having a big parent company behind you is, you know, helpful from a, you know, funding perspective and everything. It totally could still flame out, but it's, you know, it's, it's less likely to run out of money, which is sometimes just the problem there. So that's great.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: So, okay. So you signed this super secret, double secret NDA, but you are talking to me here. So there are some things you're allowed to talk about now.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh yeah. Yeah. No, they, so after, after we, we, you know, detached from, from Google, we weren't secret anymore. Okay. Got it. Now it was out in the open. Right. Alphabet has this, you know, health tech company and we talk about what we're doing all the time. And, and a lot of the projects, not all of them, but a lot of the projects are public. Okay. And, um.

Chris Gammell: That's true. And I guess you've been on embedded twice, I think, since you've been on the amp hour. And I think you've talked to some of it about on there as well.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. So it's, it's much less. And even Google X gave up a little bit of the secrecy angle. I mean, they still have non-public projects too, of course, but I think they realized that this like total, you know, black curtain doesn't really benefit as much as people think.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Okay. So, I mean, what are some of these projects you've been working on? I mean, we're, you know, again, whatever you're allowed to talk about. I wouldn't have thought of Google X or Google in general doing healthcare stuff, but at the same time there's software and everything and Google's a big software company. So it's kind of, kind of makes sense. They like the data piece, right?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, it's a good point. So, um, it's true that, that sort of the information part of, of healthcare is, is a spot where Google would have a lot of contribution, uh, but also the hardware itself and a lot of the actual like tech innovation in health is, is part of our jurisdiction too. One of my favorite projects is this accommodating contact lens, which is public. You know, every person, if you live long enough gets presbyopia, you know, you can't read the newspaper when you get to be over the age of 40 or 50, because eyes just, eyes just get old and they don't focus close anymore. So everyone uses reading glasses, but, uh, we've been working on a contact lens that actually changes focal length automatically for you. So when you look up from the newspaper, it focuses far. And when you look down at the newspaper, it focuses near and, um, basically makes your presbyopia go away, which is really awesome. And it's a cool technical project that has to have, you know, a battery and a microcontroller and a focal length changing optic all inside a contact lens.

Chris Gammell: Wait, there's a battery in there?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wow. Okay.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, I know. It's, it's, it's a full, it's a full on piece of electronics, uh, in a, in a semi-disposable contact lens.

Chris Gammell: That is intense. Yeah. And well, I guess we should also refer people to the, I think the video you had just done when you were last in the amp hour, which was an led in a contact lens. Was that part of your recruiting effort or being recruited rather?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No, it's, you know, it's hilarious how that turned out. And so, no, at the time I was, I was kind of making fun of these, um, of these augmented reality researchers at UW who actually, I think I ended up working with in kind of a weird way, but they, um, you know, there was another one of these pop media articles about, oh my God, you know, researchers put an led in a contact lens, you know, this is like the beginning of AR displays in a contact lens. And I was trying to point out that putting an led in and lighting it up is actually not too hard. The hard part is, you know, the optics and the bandwidth and the throughput and the image forming and all that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: And also watching Ben put a contact into his eye that was not meant for an eyeball. That was the hardest part for me. That was very rough to watch.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No, that, that was a pretty hilarious video and it did have kind of the intended effect where people were flipping out and I was a little bit more provocative maybe in those days. And so I was just putting the video.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, so, okay. So you worked on the real thing though. So that's interesting is a historical perspective, but how do you, I mean, how do you get these micro scales that you're, you're doing? Like what, what were some of the technologies that you had to create or work with that were made this possible? Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I have to admit, I actually haven't worked on, on the accommodating lens myself personally, even though I'm pretty well aware of it, but yeah, they, we actually have a micro fab and everything on site. So we can do a lot of, you know, wire bonding and sort of chip scale type processes, not a foundry, but, but, but the micro fab for doing all the support type structures. And that's pretty handy to have on site. We also have like injection molding machines and diamond turn machines on site to do all the optics. And that that's kind of a key part when you're doing these really advanced custom optics projects.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. So what were some of the things that you were working on then outside of the, I mean, if it's not the contact lens.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Well, you know, unfortunately, so I work for the super secret confidential lab.

Chris Gammell: Interview over. It's all done.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: It is fun because, so I have the job of prototyping all of like the, the yet to be disclosed type things, which is fun because I get to work on, you know, the latest type stuff. But it does mean that, that all of my projects are the undisclosed ones that haven't actually hit the ground just yet. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Okay. Well, let's talk a little bit about process then, because one thing that's interesting to me is, is the fact that you're doing, you know, large, you're doing research and kind of seems like fundamental research. I mean, I, I listened to the embedded episodes about your time at valve as well. And it seems like you're always kind of like trying out these things, you're trying a lot of different things and then you're kind of packaging it up and getting it to a working state. But what is that like inside of large companies? I mean, do you have complete freedom or what is it, what does your lab look like as much as you're allowed to say?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's a good way of approaching it. My lab looks kind of, kind of like my shop. You can see in the YouTube videos, like it's mostly electronics with some 3d printing and actually a little bit of chemistry. Okay. And it's pretty, you know, we, we gave up our desks. So we made a deal with the CEO early on that we, we gave up our desks to get a little bit more lab space. So I live in the lab a hundred percent time and don't have a desk outside.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's good too. Cause then there's access control. What's that? What's that a management pipe? I can't hear you. You're on the other side of that locked door. I don't know what you're saying.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, right. Exactly. And so as, as long as I can have a cup of coffee at my workstation, that's, that's basically, you know, as much as I need there.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: And so, uh, yeah, we, you know, the process of innovation, we, we, we basically are trusted to come up with stuff that's going to be good for the company. So taking into account sort of the scale at which we need to execute things and sort of the impact that it needs to have in healthcare and then all of the inputs, like how much possible, you know, how much of this is an engineering project and how much of it is sort of a scientific guess, basically. Kind of put these things all into a blender and come up with an idea that sort of ticks all the boxes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it sounds kind of, you know, to use a oft quoted, but maybe not super accurate thing. It, it kind of sounds like the Bell Labs model of like, there is some fundamental research, but then it's very targeted at getting out to a commercial product. Is that a, is that a fair assumption?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, even within Verily, we have like a separate science team that's focused a little bit more on fundamental questions as opposed to taking engineering and making a product. And we, you know, we try to blend together and stuff and come up with things that are kind of right on the edge, which is probably the most valuable space in which to innovate.

Chris Gammell: Totally. And okay. So now you're working on a project. We should probably come up with a fake project. We can keep using it as an example here. Let's see. Robotic finger. That's what we're going to go with today. So you're making a new robotic finger. Chris was cutting some vegetables. He chopped off his pinky. He now needs a robotic finger. Uh, you've come to the edge of research. Like, what do you do then? You know, like you can't find, you can't Google for anything else. You can't find anything else that's out there. Like what steps do you start taking when that, when you, when you run into that wall?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, it's, it's, it's really a good question. And I think, um, probably some of the most successful things, the most successful tech products are sort of recombinations of existing things that have just come into reality. So like, for example, you know, the iPhone is this hugely successful product. And it didn't involve any brand new tech. It's not like they came out with a, a new kind of display or a holographic thing or a weird way to use the phone. It was literally just a phone with a really nice display, a huge touchscreen display and a connected app store. That was kind of like the ingredients that made that thing as popular as it is. And so similarly for like a robot finger type thing, you would be like taking existing innovations that are really new and people haven't had time to play with them yet and putting them together into a product. So something like brushless motor control, plus maybe an algorithm that allows the finger to work better some way, some piece of software that makes it more useful.

Chris Gammell: That's like new haptics, something from a smartphone. Okay. So then you start casting about and you're trying to find these new pieces of tech. Like what, how do you brainstorm what's out there?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: It's, it's, uh, you know, it's a lot of internet searching and stuff. I, I, I admit that, you know, without Google, we'd, we'd all be out of a job basically. Or I shouldn't say, I mean, you know, any old search engines is what I mean, but without the internet and people basically posting stuff, it wouldn't work like it without that sort of information hose, everything would dry out. Right. Um, and some of it's personal experience. I mean, we talk to people and go around and know kind of what's newly available and that sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's good. And it makes sense. I mean, it's, it's just, you know, kind of a question of how does, how does inspiration strike, I guess, which is like, I don't know. Yeah. Sometimes I'm taking a shower, you know, or sometimes, you know, like there's, you know, there's, there's a thousand ways it could happen. I'm just wondering if there's anything specific. I'm trying to just extract your magic formula, Ben, and, uh, sell it to users of the amp hour.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Well, okay. So here, here's another key thing. Like if I say that, you know, successful tech products are combinations of things that already exist, but haven't been put together in the way the real challenge is, do you think more about what you can do with combinations of cool tech? Or do you think more about like the problem space? Like one thing that innovators often forget is that, you know, you could come up with something that's really amazing and is a combination of currently available tech, but no one might want it. Right. And so figuring out, you know, what is hard enough to build that no one's done it yet, but also something that people really need. That's the really, really challenging intersection.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, exactly. It's like, you're internally like, okay, we've created this robotic finger. It's great. It's amazing. It's super tactile. It does all these things. And our total market is everyone in the world. Everyone could use a sixth finger. It's like, whoa, what?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: That would definitely be a pivot. If you started off doing a prosthesis, you could say, well, actually, maybe people need an extra finger. That would be, that would be a classic pivot at the 11th hour.

Chris Gammell: Why not a finger on your forehead? You know, like you never know. Put them everywhere. It's, you know, primates, they started to evolve when they had thumbs, you know, or they evolved to have thumbs and look at what that happened to them. What if there was a, what if there was a second thumb, you know?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I like this actually.

Chris Gammell: That's, yeah, that's, that's, yeah. We'll market it after this episode's over. Well, so you keep saying we, so how many, how many Ben Krasnos are there? Did, did you clone yourself?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No, no. I, I work in a small team. It's just three people in fact. And so we were, we're like the skunk works department there. And so we come up with, you know, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Have you read that book, Dave, last night, well, last week I mentioned it to Dave. He still hasn't read it. Have you read skunk works? I have not, but I've used. The term like forever. It's so good. It's so good. Listen to the audio book. Fantastic. I love it. Okay. I will. I think the, uh, the only thing that's different in terms of like methodology is that they just had a shit ton more people. Like there were so many people on the skunk works teams. Uh, but they, yeah, it was just crazy how the kind of things they came up with too. Then. Okay. So now you've, you've made a robotic finger or similar. Why would you be making it in the first place? Would you be the one that's like, oh, well maybe there's a market for a robotic finger or is it like someone has come to you and be like, well, there's a thing, you know, so you mentioned problem space. Like who's, is that a push or a pull? Like, are you finding it or is someone else finding it and telling you about it?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. And this is the thing about healthcare too. So, um, first of all, it can go both ways. Like we occasionally have people like the CEO that will tell us, okay, we, you know, we need to do something in this space or I need to see something like this. And also times it's just us spitballing and we come up with it completely on our own. So that, that can work both ways. But in either case, healthcare is just, you know, horribly distorted. Like healthcare is, is bad because no one pays, there are no customers in healthcare, basically. Like if you're sick, you don't want to be sick. And you'd also don't want to pay to get better. You expect basically your insurance to take care of it or most people do.

Chris Gammell: And we should say this is a U S centric view as well, but there are other problems in other countries as well.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. So, so it is true that Verily is worldwide and we do have offices outside the U S but our primary focus is the U S at least for now. It means most, most of the company. Um, and, and most of the real problems are in fact here because the system is so screwed up. And so, yeah, it's, it's, if you want to fix healthcare, you may as well start here. Basically. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. You want a problem space. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: It's, it's 20% of the entire economy and it's also, um, a hugely, hugely inefficient thing. And the reason is that the incentive structure makes it such that everyone wants to waste as much money as possible because, um, because it's so lucrative, right?

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, that's an interesting space to be in. Okay.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. And it's so basically, you know, if you do traditional startup development, it's sort of like, okay, find, you know, your first customers, you know, give them your early products, see if they like it or not, start figuring out, but that doesn't really work so well in healthcare because the people using your product, aren't the ones paying for it. And the ones paying for it don't even care how expensive it is because they pass their costs onto someone else. And so it's a, it's a very, very distorted market that has, um, very different requirements for coming up with what a good product is.

Chris Gammell: And, uh, so who would ultimately make that decision then? Is it like, or does that not even matter to you? Maybe that's another possibility as someone who's making the technology. Is it like you make a bunch of things and then someone has to figure out if it's a viable product?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No, I, uh, for better or worse, we actually have to do some of that too.

Chris Gammell: But I mean, I think personally, I would think that like, you want to make something that's actually useful, actually like it's going to make it out there. Right. So that makes a ton of sense to me. But like you said, it's a kind of convoluted system. So I don't know.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. So no, so we have to do it. And so that's actually part of the innovation. So being, being sort of a, um, an inventor type person in healthcare means basically inventing in sort of the, the economic space of what all these things do. Like that is in fact, a big part of the innovation is figuring out how to navigate this, this really tortuous kind of, you know, economic model.

Chris Gammell: So like, I've read a lot of innovation books. I've, you know, marginally been involved in innovation in an engineering sense, but like who, who do you end up talking to, to go and find that space, problem space? And is it like doctors or who are you talking to?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: We, um, sometimes go outside for that kind of thing. And we also have physicians that work at Verily. Also the, uh, the former head of the FDA also works at Verily. Oh, wow. So we, we, we do have a lot of insight into, yeah. So no, we're, we're pretty serious about engaging the existing system and being aware of, you know, what's going on and everything. So talking to people internally is probably the most common thing. And sometimes we go outside too.

Chris Gammell: Okay. How much iteration is there then? Okay. So I, I mentioned an end product that you've already decided you're going to make a robotic finger. How often does it like, you're just like straight to it or how many times is it like, well, we're going to try a robotic toe and a robotic eyebrow and a robotic, all these different things. And eventually you end up on finger.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, that's a good question. In a, in a sort of more traditional startup, you would want to, um, iterate sort of almost like random walk out from your ideas. So if you think you have something good, you'd probably try nearby hits next kind of spiral outward to see kind of where there's a rich target for the way that we work there. It's almost better to, to do a broad scan. So if we make, try to make a hit and it turns out to be a miss or something, instead of spiraling out or to find something nearby, uh, what's worked for us better. And I think maybe serves the purpose better of us being the skunk works is to actually go completely different, go in a completely different direction and try to cover as much space as possible in a short amount of time. And, and, you know, assume that there is not a target. If you, if you have a miss, assume that the, it's, it's a better idea to hit, to shoot somewhere else as opposed to like spiral out nearby. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Because it's going to be like, there's at least going to be enough of a spark when you do find something that's worth doing a deep dive or taking all the way to production kind of thing.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I think so. And as you say, the dynamic is different. If you're at a funded place and you're in a skunk works, it's a slightly different set of requirements than if you're in a startup and you've, you're sort of purpose built.

Chris Gammell: You're just trying to survive in that case, right? Like I'll make anything.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Pretty much. And like your investors kind of expect you to do the thing that you said you were going to do. So if you're pivoting, that's cool, but you can't like go completely into left field. But in our case, it actually makes sort of more sense because we're, we're sort of early, we're almost in the stage before you have a startup and one investor. Like we're sort of pre at that level, basically. Yeah. I think.

Chris Gammell: I guess that's a good lead into like, how far do you take it then? Like, so you make a, is this like a show it to a internal team? Is it make 10 of them, make a hundred of them, make a thousand of them? How many, what is the output of your group and like what you end up making?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, we, we've made hundreds. That's as high as we've gone enough to show basically technical reliability. So usually the question is, you know, I don't think it's going to work. That's usually the first complaint or whatever, which is great. Cause that means we're, we're coming up with something that's so technically good that people, you know, first think, well, it's not going to work. So then if you build a hundred of them and show a reliability curve, it's like, okay, they work. So that, that question's over. And then the next question is, well, I don't think it's going to work in the market. I think it works technically, but it's not going to work economically or something. And that's, and that's a much more like gory question, obviously to prove that it works economically would mean it's a fully completed product. So, so the next step is to basically try to build evidence showing that this thing could actually be a real product and survive in the healthcare market. And that's, that's challenging. That's really tough. It makes the technical stuff look like, you know, like if a, if a day is your whole product cycle, the first like 10 or 20 minutes is basically the technicals and the rest of the day is figuring out like the economics of how to like make it into a product. Right, right, right, right.

Chris Gammell: And I mean, then I assume some of the things you've done have made it all the way, all the way out. I mean, how much, how much does it look like the thing that you've output by the time it makes it to the actual market?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Sometimes it can be pretty close actually. Like we, we, you know, Verily's model is to always partner with other hardware manufacturers so that they end up being the manufacturer of record. And so in a lot of times they actually don't, we, we don't get our name out there. So it's not good for vanity people because there are products out there now that Verily engineers have worked on, but it has nothing to do with Verily. Like the, the partner usually takes the name and the marketing and everything else. Interesting.

Chris Gammell: So how does Verily make money then?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh, you know, they, they pay us. I mean, it's.

Chris Gammell: So it's like a licensing.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, basically. Yeah. That makes sense. But a lot of times it does stay pretty close to the original concept prototype, even in a lot of cases.

Chris Gammell: So it sounds like you're almost like you're making like a dev kit that someone can be like, you know, I've seen a couple of dev kits that look very similar to the end products. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, actually.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So are you allowed to say anything that you've worked on in the past or no?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Unfortunately, I don't think so.

Chris Gammell: All right. So, well, folks, if you're sick at some point and you've got a robotic finger, you may thank Ben Krasnow or not. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. If it doesn't work, don't, don't mention it.

Chris Gammell: Have you? Oh, I guess this is the question then. So has anyone ever asked you to do something on the Applied Science channel that you've ended up having worked on?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No. I mean, but if people suggest anything that's like bio or healthcare, I'll tell them it's off limits. Like that's, yeah, that's the one thing we can't touch on the channel.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. Well, it sounds like a playground. I mean, what kind of gear do you have? I mean, do you have like specialized gear or like, I'm imagining like a mad scientist lab, but it sounds like it's just a lab.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Actually, we are one of the biggest tour stops on, uh, in the campus there. So when they bring, you know, folks through it, we do have quite a few really good demos. One of them, I think I can get away with this. Um, one of our products actually uses a, uh, a combustion as its source of energy. And so we use, we use a tiny amount of, um, of nitrous cellulose and, uh, you know, it's like magician's flash paper. And so the actual device uses a teeny tiny amount, like 200 micrograms of this stuff. It's it's when you set it off, it doesn't even make like a, it doesn't look like anything happened that doesn't even make a pop. Like it literally just disappears, but to show it off for the demos, we burn, you know, a couple of grams of this stuff and it makes this big fireball and everything. It's a good demo. That's great. And it actually has a real use in the product because, uh, compared to lithium batteries, even the, the energy and power density of nitrous cellulose is like thousands of times higher.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I mean, I can't imagine how to capture all that stuff, but that's, uh, probably part of the magic, right?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's basically like a little motor. And so, you know, if you, if you burn this thing, the expansion of it is what drives a process for us.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's really cool. That's actually a good lead in. Uh, you do a lot of chemistry, uh, like a lot of chemistry. Were you doing that when we last talked?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Um, probably not quite as much as now. Um, I don't know. I've always liked chemistry, but, um, it is true in my current role, you know, being on the bio side, you know, like fluids and chemicals and stuff just crop up more often.

Chris Gammell: I mean, your background was mechanical and obviously you do electrical and chemical and all this other stuff. So what was the lead in? Cause I feel like everything's kind of moving towards the biological realm anyways. So like, how did you start kind of taking into that world more?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I mean, yeah, it's the only internet basically. So everything I've learned about chemistry came from the internet. So for better or worse, but yeah, it's, uh, I don't know. I mean, chemistry is fun, right? Like everyone loves mixing things together and, you know, exploding nitrocellulose and stuff. I mean, it's, it's a very like attractive kind of feel.

Chris Gammell: I'm mostly just scared of it. You know what I mean? Like I, so I would look at your home setup and you know, on your, your channel and it seems like everything's kind of quite dangerous. And I, I think it's just, that's just, I'm not, I'm clueless about it. Right. So that it seems dangerous, but maybe it's not. And, um, I wouldn't even know where to start for that kind of thing.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: You know, it's true. No, there, there's definitely, um, and I actually safety is an interesting topic that comes up, you know, on the YouTube channel a lot too, where YouTube creators traditionally have this like annoyance with, with safety commentators. And, um, uh, back in the day, um, Matthias Wandel, you know, this woodworking guy would he'd say, okay, if you post a comment that has anything to do with safety on my channel, I just ban you immediately. And I mean, he, he, he was maybe a little bit more sensitive than I am even, but it's still the same thing where people are like, are you sure this is safe or whatever? And it's like, well, I, you know, I don't, I don't know. So in my last video, there was definitely not safe stuff going on. I mean, I was basically feeding acetylene and hydrogen into a glass tube that was like red hot in a furnace. And it's like, well, it's pretty obviously what could happen there. So I don't know. I always say, you know, life is unsafe. I mean, that's, I always say I take safety precautions. I don't really think of myself as a careless or a reckless person, but yeah, there's, there's always an element of, certainly there's more risk than doing a circuit board. Sure.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Right. But we also cross the street every day, get into cars, you know, lots of other dangerous things, I guess it's, that's where the precautions come in. Um, so that's, that's good.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Uh, that's what I always bring up too. Like people, people, the more like weird and gruesome, the possibility of the accident, the more that people focus on it. And so it's like radiation, x-rays, um, you know, chemical reactions, like poisons that get inside you without you knowing it. Those like really freak people out. But, but yeah, when you step across the street, your chances of getting flattened are like, you know, way higher. Yeah, definitely.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. So, I mean, on the chemistry side of things though, so what are some resources, I guess, that you look at online? I mean, like, are you, I think about it and I think of like redox equations, which you kind of cover sometimes on your channel and, you know, it's in a very practical way, but it's like, like the channels call it supplied science, right? So like, what is the, what is the threshold for like starting to just kind of hit the chemistry and actually mix things together, I guess?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. Um, I always like to be like application driven. So I, you know, a lot of people, and this is why I think university is totally upside down. Like when you show up at university, they just start giving you the fundamentals without any like background of why you'd ever need this stuff, which is totally, totally the upside down way to learn. And it's much better to have a problem and you just get into it and trying to solve that problem. And along the way, you'll learn things that are useful. And that's how, you know, that the stuff was useful because you needed it. Yeah, of course. Of course. So I, yeah, right. So I think if you, if you have like a problem that could be solved with chemistry, um, like for example, this energy storage problem we had, it's like, okay, lithium ion is great, but it's still not powerful enough, um, and energy dense enough for this problem. So what do we do? And then you start investigating other stuff. Well, what are other energetic materials that we could use? You know, combustion is one way. How do you harness it? What kind of combustion, you know, is, are we talking detonation? Does it just burn quickly? I mean, there's all these other things that'll come up, but if you know, your goal is to basically make a, a cheap, small energy storage system, then you kind of have parameters to start like looking into.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I mean, that's a, that's a really good example too. It's like you, so you, so you basically are running up into a, a wall of limitations and then that's when you start to kind of cast about and find, you know, whatever tools you need for that. And that, then that's kind of more the just in time learning kind of concept of it all. Right.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I like that phrase. Yeah. It's just in time learning, which I think should be like the main way of doing it. And like the fundamentals ground up approach is, is at least never worked for me. Maybe it works for other people.

Chris Gammell: So I've thought about this a lot and I've talked about it on some conference talks I've given too. And the thing that I always wonder about is like how much background, the, the push and pull of it all is like, how much background information do you really need? Right. So like just in time is good. And I think for someone at your level and maybe my level as well, like it's, it's good and it's like, okay to go dig into a redox equation at that point. But if you're like, why does it say H plus? Like, I don't know how much baseline knowledge you need. You know what I mean? Like how deep the rabbit hole goes if you don't have that underlying knowledge.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. It's a good point at the level of like H plus. Okay. Maybe that should be sort of background learning and you can learn that without needing necessarily a task. There's sort of like this other layer where it's like one up from that, where you might see like the phrase Lewis base in one of these chemistry papers. And then, then it starts to get harder because that's definitely something that would not be taught to sort of like, that wouldn't be that, if you have a chemistry major, you'd know what it is. But if you're some other kind of major, you probably wouldn't be taught that in university anyway. And then it's hard to find out what it is because everyone who only talks about, you know, the structure of Lewis bases are already pretty well acquainted. Like there's this like middle layer where it's like very hard to access background information.

Chris Gammell: It's like the, I mean, like you and I've talked about already, it's like, what do you Google for? And in that case, it's even hard to Google for that stuff because you don't know what to be, what the search parameters are around that, that thing or then finding good resources.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, it gets, I mean, of course there's a, there's a Wikipedia article for it, but if you read it, it's not helpful because it's only written for chemists and other people that are pretty well acquainted with the topic. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've had some contextual electronics students that are like, well, you know, we were using an op amp and I went and read an op amp wiki page, wiki page. And now I'm like, I've been here for 16 hours and I don't know, I don't know what anything that's going on. It's like, okay, whoa, let's take a step back. And sometimes it's like, you just got to go and find something to follow along and try it. And it almost sounds like that's what the, some of the papers that you're doing as well, like that's kind of the forming the context for, for what you're building out. Is that fair?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I think the op amp example is perfect too, because op amps don't work anything like they describe in undergraduate college courses, like not even close. Like you should just forget all that stuff. It doesn't make any difference. Op amps are so far from, if you had a perfect op amp, obviously we'd all be out of a job because the whole point of electrical engineering is figuring out how to work around limitations essentially in op amps. Right. And so.

Chris Gammell: That's great. That's great. Everything would be an analog computer. I hated it. You'd be fine.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh yeah. I felt cheated. Cause it's like, you know, you read, you read even on Wikipedia, you know, how an op amp works and you feel like, okay, I understand it now. And then you go try to implement it and you'll be, I mean, you're, you're, you're sunk. I mean, there's so many, there's so many imperfections that it's, it's not even close.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the fun of analog. Well, to jump over to electronics real quick, you are a KiCad user and I was very happy about that. I've told people about that. How did, how did that get all started?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I, I love KiCad. In fact, it was an easier transition than I thought. So I guess, let's see. I, so I started off with Altium actually, I guess in the early days, just because why did we pick Altium? Maybe it was cause it was Jeff's favorite.

Chris Gammell: No. Cause I remember Jeff learned it when he came to valve. So someone else, I think maybe Jerry did someone at, you're talking about at valve, right? I remember Jeff saying, I have to learn Altium now. I think he had learned other things. So maybe nobody picked it. I don't even know who's, you know, Alan's from Australia. So maybe it was him, you know, that's an Australian company. Altium is. So.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Huh? Okay. Maybe it was, I can't remember anyway, but I was on Altium and then, um, actually switched to Eagle for a while. Uh, one of the other Google X guys was a big Eagle fan and, uh, to make it easier to switch files and stuff, you know, I, I was using Eagle and then, uh, it was actually when they went to the subscription model that I decided to give KiCad a look and, uh, was totally blown away by how polished it was. I was expecting something kind of, you know, half baked, but it's actually very serviceable. In fact, some of the features are even better than an Altium at this point.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Okay. Like the push and shove routing is one thing that people really love. You can drag your traces around and it keeps the, it keeps the design rules intact in real time as you're dragging. And you're like, wow, this just works.

Chris Gammell: I had a moment where I was using it a couple, couple of days ago. And I was like, I actually don't remember a time before this. I don't know if I could ever go back. Cause it would be, it'd be real bad. So.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. And, and a cross platform and open source. I mean, everything about it's pretty fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Well, great. You should come to KiCon 2020 now. You know, it's in CERN. Oh yeah. I'm sure that they, you know, you could just go and like pop into the Atlas and, you know, show them a couple of things. And so you should do that. Uh, yeah, that's great. Uh, what other kinds of tools, I mean, are in your Ben Krasnow toolbox? Like what else? I mean, machining seems like a really big piece of what you're doing on applied science. Maybe it worked too. I'm not sure.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. We're actually physically right next to the machine shop in the, at the Verily campus. Um, and so we, we occasionally get their help with stuff. We have two Haas mills and actually a big five axis Okuma in there too. So we were, we're pretty on machines. Um, the form labs printer has actually been the biggest game changer piece of equipment that we got in the last year or two.

Chris Gammell: That's the SLA just for high, high resolution and stuff.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. And, um, there, they cost about $3,000, which is very cheap compared to what the, the usage of the, of the things that come out of them. So if, you know, proto labs makes three high resolution, 3d printed parts. And we used to have like a, a monthly basically open tab with proto labs. And then since buying these form labs printers, we just stopped using labs completely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And then it's like right there. You just set it before you go home, you come back in and it's effectively good to go. And that kind of thing. That's nice.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: The resolution is fantastic. And the, the material properties are good enough. They're not, you know, perfect. It's not like a piece of ABS plastic, but it's good enough where you can basically make functional parts with, you know, I'd say what 50 micron resolution. It's pretty fantastic. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, and so, I mean, it seems like kind of CAD is, you know, so now you're in a world where fabrication is not easy, but it's simplified. So is it like your CAD skills kind of have to up to match your, your, uh, the needs of your projects and stuff?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I've always been kind of okay at CAD. Like, uh, we use solid works at work just cause it's, it's already set up kind of in the Google, like big licensing system and everything. But I would definitely use I at home, I use fusion 360 and recommend that for people that are doing small businesses or anything else.

Chris Gammell: I like that one as well. It's a, it's good. We're trying a new thing on the amp hour where we've asked our sponsors to teach our audience. This is a really important thing for us today. Dwayne Benson from screaming circuits is going to talk about an old pick and place machine and how that impacts their customers.

Dave Jones: Even though, you know, most of our businesses is, is, uh, deals with the newer componentry. We do have some legacy customers and we've held some equipment around to service with that. The machine is, uh, it's called an automated sequencing and insertion machine, the VCD from universal instruments.

Chris Gammell: I've actually had the opportunity to tour screaming circuits in person, and we'll hear more about that in the future. But this machine was just the first thing I wanted the amp hour audience to hear about. It's this huge piece of machinery. It's heavy, it's metal. It's, and it looks dangerous and awesome.

Dave Jones: Well, it sounds a bit like a train engine going through when we're running it. It's big and blue. Um, the sequencer component of it, probably 15 feet long, and it has these room, room for these big through hole reels. And yes, three through hole components used to come on reels as well. And it takes all of these things, it clips them out and puts them in a new tape that is ordered based on when the components will be put in the board, not based on what components they're that, uh, not based on what the component is. So then you come up with a, you, you end up with a second reel or, you know, final reel there. You end up with a reel that has all of these components in sequence. You put that into the through hole insertion machine, takes that tape and it cuts out the components, bends the leads, sticks them, sticks them in the through hole board, trims the leads, and then bends them a little bit. So the parts don't fall out and gets it all ready to go into a wave solder machine.

Chris Gammell: And so my next inevitable question, and maybe yours too, is who's using this thing? Who actually needs a through hole pick and place machine in 2020 with all of the great equipment that's literally sitting 20 feet away on the screaming circuits manufacturing floor?

Dave Jones: We still have two customers who have been with us for decades or with our parent company, Milwaukee Electronics for decades. And we still use this largely for their jobs. It's one of the contrasts of modern manufacturing in most cases where you sort of leave the old behind. In this particular case, we don't. We carry it with us. Those customers who've been with us for so long, they have a decision to make every year whether they should redesign their board or just keep using it as is. And some of this is going to some really, really harsh environment equipment. And it has made more sense for them to keep building the same thing than to redesign it. But when someone's known you for 20, 30 years and has trusted you for that long and continues to trust you for that long, that's a real, real important statement. And it's something that we strive for with all of the folks that we do business with. We don't want to just put parts on boards. We want a relationship.

Chris Gammell: So no matter what type of technology you're working on, Screaming Circuits wants to build your next board and also a relationship. Go check out ScreamingCircuits.com slash The Amp Hour and go get an instant quote for your next board assembly. And now back to the show. I feel like we should, you know, so we've got, you know, we're 45 minutes in here. We haven't really even talked about all these. Damn, Ben, like how many videos have you made since we last talked? There's so many here. So we got to talk about some of them. Um, I'm just going to go by sort, sort by, uh, popular and, uh, look at some.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh, good. Some of the ones. This will be telling.

Chris Gammell: So number one is electron microscope, slow motion vinyl LP. Um, I was actually thinking about that cause I got a new toothbrush the other day and I actually don't think about the vinyl LP. I think about the toothbrush that you showed and like, like the, the difference in the bristles and how, how they were, uh, super worn down on old toothbrushes. So what was that video in the first place?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Uh, the, uh, the vinyl LP was, was me taking like a record and putting a phonograph needle on it inside a scanning electron microscope and then animating it. I mean, it's basically stop motion animation to show kind of the needle riding in the groove. That was a really fun video to make. And in fact, coincidentally, just last night I was editing more, uh, scanning electron microscope animation footage. So that'll be coming out pretty soon. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I really liked that. Uh, didn't you create your own extraction system for the scanning electron microscope as well?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. In its current version, it's just a teensy with a, what's basically just a teensy that, that, that, uh, steals the bit stream and puts it into the computer so I can, you know, just digitize the image quickly. Um, but, but there's a, I, I really should do an honest, like a full on EE project for the, for the channel. Cause I need a much better capture system, like a full on, like, you know, probably FPGA driven sort of capture. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What are the limitations with it right now?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Well, basically my skill level.

Chris Gammell: Oh no, I'm sorry. I meant the actual, like, is it like capture time of like getting, is it like slow scan for the, the actual getting the, the bit stream out or, or what does it look like?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's literally just a, an ADC with a USB port on it. And so it just pulls in this thing. And so the challenge is that the machine runs on its own and you just have to wait for it. Whereas what would be nice is if the computer could control the machine, then you wouldn't have to wait for it and you could do much more thing, much better things with frame timing. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Uh, next up is a refrigerator that works by stretching rubber bands. This is actually somewhat low tech, but I think this was about the, the heat or sorry, the cooling that happens from the mechanical properties of rubber bands, right?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. It's actually, it's a cool thing to play with, right? Like if you're at your desk with a rubber band, you can stretch it and it gets warm, which doesn't seem surprising. I mean, you've put effort into it, but if you keep it stretched for a minute and let it kind of cool back down to room temperature, when you let it go, it actually gets pretty noticeably cold. Like you can put it up to your lips and feel that it really gets cold when it contracts, which is really counterintuitive. I don't think most people would expect a rubber band to get cold when you let it go.

Chris Gammell: And then you like set it up. So you had like a couple of them to create the, the heat extraction element from a actual, uh, a box, right. You created.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, exactly. I made the box. That was that. So that video was, I mean, I wouldn't say built for the shaper, but this, this handheld CNC router thing that I like a lot, um, basically making all these flat parts out of plywood and cutting them out was kind of the actual, the sort of the thing that launched that whole video.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, Jeremy Blum, former guest of the show has been, he's, uh, he's still there, I think. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They've been, I think they're selling, are they selling those in like Home Depots yet or no?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, I think a woodcraft is their, uh, their chosen brick and mortar.

Chris Gammell: I don't, is that a California chain? I don't actually know that one. Then again, I'm not really, you know, wood trafter.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Or, yeah, no, it is, it is definitely a chain around here. I thought they were national, but I'm not sure.

Chris Gammell: Could be. I'm in like downtown Chicago now too. I'm not a lot of, not a lot of, uh, you know, home, home goods or home, uh, repair stores here. So that'll, that'll do it too. Uh, okay. Uh, and then the next one is drill through anything conductive with an electro, uh, this is electrical something, something. What was that? Oh, the EDM. That's pretty cool.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. Uh, that was another one that was sort of like launched by a thing. And so this, this, uh, gentleman in, uh, I think the Netherlands builds these EDM power supplies and said, oh, well, you know, you, you should have one of these on your channel and show everyone the, you know, the possibilities of EDM. And so that turned out to be a lot more work than I was thinking. Like basically this guy has built the power supply only, but the whole machine and the control and everything is essentially someone else's deal. And, um, I, it was still a fun build, but it definitely took a huge amount of effort to put together the basically a entirely custom CNC control and the thing and getting it all working and stuff. And it, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not trivial. Right. What was special about the power supply though?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Uh, it is a very high frequency, I believe current controlled, very high current, um, pulse current power supply. And so I think it involves like a custom wound transformer and stuff with feedback. And, uh, it's not a trivial piece of engineering. Yeah, definitely.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Uh, I'm going to skip ahead cause I have videos that I like of yours as well. And actually it's not, I'm not sure why it's not higher up on the thing, maybe cause it's specialized. I'm trying to see where it is here, but the one that I always talk about with your, your channel is the, the laser traces. You're sorry. You put conductive traces on a thing. I don't remember what it's called. Um, but you're basically making circuit boards.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. So that's, that's actually an example of what, of what cooking without a recipe looks like. So it's, so I always mentioned that, you know, a lot of the things I do on my channel are either replicating papers or showing like a well-known scientific principle or doing like a demo or something, but the, the making conductive traces on plastic was a completely, uh, improvised, you know, homegrown, no recipe type exploration where I basically wanted to come up with a method to take a standard CO2 laser cutter and a standard piece of plastic or 3d printed plastic and put them together with some chemicals to make copper wherever you hit the surface with the CO2 laser. And there's a little bit of precedent. I mean, the whole technique exists in the commercial market, but no one's ever done it with like a CO2 laser with home chemicals and everything.

Chris Gammell: This is, uh, Andreas Spies had like helped with the early stages of that company as well. The one that you were talking. So when he was on the show, it was like right when that video came out, but Andreas like was part of like, I think early investor or something like that. I forget. He wasn't a founder founder. I don't think, or I'm probably messing this up too, but he was somehow involved and, and it was like, it just come out and he was on the show and we were like, wow, that's, that's crazy that that was kind of tied together. But this is like the, when you go to a trade show and you see traces printed directly on plastic.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Exactly. Yeah. The commercial term for it is the MID, a, um, I think metallized interconnect device is the phrase they like. And it's true. Uh, Andreas was the, I think, I think, yeah, a founder, early investor or something in the, in the biggest, basically the industry leader in this, in this tech. I actually ran into him at super con and it was good that I didn't like, I, I was good. I didn't say anything bad in my talk about, you know, the, um, this company being, of being so difficult to prototype and stuff. But yeah, it's, I'm sure it's fine.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure it's fine. Um, yeah. And this, the reason I actually mentioned is you'd think it would be because of the, the output, but I've actually never, uh, I've actually never seen any product that's actually used this, this technique. I'm sure it's out there, right? It's like for antennas inside of cases and similar kinds of things. I've actually never seen any usefulness out of it. The reason I like it so much is actually because you didn't have a recipe because of the thing I always think about is you were up on the camera and you're saying, well, on, uh, on try number 66, it's, you know, it started to work, but on try 88, that's when it actually worked. And I just like, I was watching that Ben and I'm just like, holy shit, you try that 88 times. And that's what I always point to is like, like the scientific method that you kind of employ on a, on a regular basis, especially in your home shop that like, that's what I'm very, very impressed with. So like, what does that look like to maintain that, uh, that control and that, uh, discipline when you're doing like home, home experiments?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, it's, well, it's, I mean, it's a lot of boring work. It was that quote from Thomas Edison where he's like, um, success is like 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration or something like that. And it's totally true. I mean, I think a lot of people get the wrong idea about engineering or science where they think, oh, you must, you know, you must sit down and think about what you want to do. And then you get up and then do it. But that's, I mean, that's, that doesn't work that way in any place in the world. It's, it's tons of like beating your head against the wall and stuff. I was tutoring someone else about technical stuff and she was so surprised that a lot of it is just literally beating your head against the wall until things start working. Like that's the skill that actually makes it happen. And that's, that's kind of the secret to it. So yeah, that, that custom, that process of trying things over and over is a lot of boring work. Basically just keep trying things and, uh, there aren't random guesses. They're hopefully informed guesses, but, but they are in fact just guesses. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So I, I've just finished the book grit and, uh, it sounds like that's kind of a kind of the, um, kind of what they talk about in that book of like, just like you need to, you need to stick with it, but what makes you stick with it? I guess. I, I know these are kind of impossible questions, but like what, what drives you, Ben?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: That is a really, yeah. So it's something I think about a lot. I mean, basically motivation is the thing that underpins literally all of the decisions you'll ever make in your entire life.

Chris Gammell: I always say that like, if you have, so I once replaced the center console in my car, in my like Honda civic, like really crappy car or not a center console, the radio, but like, I didn't know what I was doing. I broke a bunch of stuff, whatever. I eventually got it to work. And I had this thought of like, if I had enough time and an internet connection, I could frigging build anything. Now, is that really true? I don't think so. But like, you know, with enough time and maybe add money in there too. And like, you can really build a lot of things. Uh, but what makes you keep going? Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Uh, well, you know, I, it, it is kind of hard to put your finger on, uh, you know, some people, what drives people to become these, um, you know, these CEOs that basically spend, you know, 80 hours a week, really, really just driving a company hard. Like in a lot of cases, a company just won't be successful unless there's someone in there totally a hundred percent dedicated to it. And you ask, why would you do that? Like, even if you're already financially stable or if you're, you know, what, like what you or you don't care about being rich, like, you know, what, what is it in fact that's, that's causing you to do this?

Chris Gammell: Did you just finish the Elon Musk biography too? Cause I just listened to that.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No, actually it sounds pretty, I'd be curious to know what his motivators are.

Chris Gammell: It sounds like he's crazy, honestly. Like, like I, I respect what he's built. I mean, it sounds like he's terrible to work for. Um, but like, it sounds like he's crazy. Like that, that's like the best I've got. And like, you know, God bless him. But so Ben, are you crazy?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. It definitely takes a little bit of it. Like, why would you do the same thing 88 times when there's no like financial benefit or really any other kind of benefit?

Chris Gammell: But I'm just, I'm odd by it though too. Like I'm really like, it is, it is a sense of like, I'm odd. Um, so it's just cause you wanted, you wanted to get it done, I guess.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. Maybe it's almost like the alternative is to just, I don't know, to like do something that's not as good or, or no, like the alternative of like watching TV or something. It's like, well, that almost seems worse in my book. So then it's like, okay, should I just sit around and watch TV today? Or should I do the thing 88 times?

Chris Gammell: Well, that's a, that's a great, that's a great example. Sorry. And I mean, what happens when you get something right? Do you get, do you get like a rush?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, a bit. Oh yeah. It will. Especially in that case. So, I mean, imagine cooking in the kitchen, right? If you throw random stuff together and it comes out tasting great. I mean, you know, that's, that's, everyone's happy. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But that's like your tongue telling it, telling your brain to be like, Oh, dopamine time. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Actually, that's an interesting distinction. So yeah, it's true that food is a primary pleasure. And so all these other things that we're talking about are secondaries, which that's, that's interesting distinction.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, I mean, I guess you could go, you could always go and trade your knowledge of laser centered electronic traces for food or, you know, money or fame or whatever. I don't know what, yeah, they're all secondary things. All right. It's like, like food and reproduction are the two main things.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: So, uh, yeah, exactly. Um, and it's true. In fact, uh, even on Hacker News today, uh, Tim Ferriss, you know, the writer, the creator of the four hour work week was explaining why fame is actually pretty lousy. And he's goes into detail about all the bad things that have happened to him since he's become famous and stuff. And there was a funny quote from Bill Murray who says, well, if you think you want to be rich and famous, why don't you just try being rich first and see if that takes care of what you need. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, I believe that. Uh, uh, uh, it's, it's tough to listen to people say that though, too. It's like, oh, okay, well I get it. It's probably, you're probably right, but come on. Like nobody's, nobody actually has any sympathy for them. You know what I mean?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No. And it's, it's funny how that works. Like I, I, I definitely enjoy, you know, having a big YouTube channel. I'm not going to lie about that, but it is also true that people may not quite see that there, there is a balance to it. And, um, I think well-known in a niche circle is probably the best thing. Like I could, I could see Bill Murray, like not being, you know, excited about being recognized at a restaurant or something. But if you're, you know, a star EE guy or whatever, I think that's probably okay. And you don't have to worry about being recognized at a restaurant, but you still get the benefits of being well-known.

Chris Gammell: Well, I don't know about your circles, Ben, but, uh, you know, when you hang out at the EE restaurants, you know, although I guess, I guess like once a year at like a post maker fair party or whenever, whatever these similar kind of maker, you know, super con or something, then it's like, you know, it's like Ben Krasnow is like the Bill Murray of super con.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: So maybe so, like you say, I'm not unhappy with it. I think it's fine.

Chris Gammell: And it's great to be able to like meet new people and like, you know, have people talk like, understand, like have a shared context, right? Like you have done all these projects, you've shared them, which is fantastic. I've benefited. A lot of people have benefited. And at the end of the day, it's like, you can talk about a thing that you don't have to be like, well, let me tell you about everything I've done because they've already watched what you've done and that's kind of nice. And then you can just kind of talk about the end results or what might be possible with it after the fact.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. I always try to get ideas from people too. I always really enjoy hearing people's ideas for the channel and kind of what they'd like to see and that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's great. And I actually do, I do like that you, um, read the comments and it seems like you have a good YouTube comment section, like relatively calm.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh yeah. It's fantastic. In fact, I, I don't even know, like I don't police it or anything, but it just stays good all by itself. I'm not really even sure what happens, but yeah, it's no, it's, it's a fantastic comment section.

Chris Gammell: That helps a lot. It helps a lot. Uh, you mentioned food. That's another one I always bring up. I don't know why people don't bring this one up more, but like the cookie one, the cookie machine that you built is like one of my favorite videos of yours. Mostly because it's like, it's like the perfect, anytime someone like brings anything about like, oh, we should like tweak this parameter, that parameter. I'm like, oh, it's like a design of experiment. Let me tell you about a video that is a perfect example of a design of experiment. It's about cookies.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think this one was actually inspired by, um, a long time ago, there was a, or maybe it's still going. There was a conference called, uh, exceptionally hard and soft, kind of a funny name, but that was its name. Um, and, um, there was either a mate or a beer that was varied batch to batch. And there was either a QR code on the bottle or some kind of identifier where you could know like which batch you got and vote on which one was your favorite. So that was like the seed that planted this. And I thought, well, I'll microize it down to like, you know, the single cookie level as opposed to the batch of, you know, mate or whatever it was.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, how much, how much mate can you drink? You know, you'd just be shaking out your boots.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I think this was actually a commercial or at least a semi-commercial enterprise that was doing this. So they were, they were, they were making batches fast enough where they could, you know, have a different recipe every week or whatever it was.

Chris Gammell: That's kind of a, that could be hit or miss. Like commercially it's like, oh, well this one tasted like a shoe.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I know. And, and it, yeah, exactly. And it's like the Coke experiment where it's like, well, once people like it, they're probably not going to stop. Yeah, that's true.

Chris Gammell: And I mean, that kind of goes back to the whole product research thing. I mean, like you ask someone what they want, they're like, I want exactly what I have. Don't, don't change the thing or change something. And they're lying about what they actually want it to change. You know, it's tough to, in the innovation space, it's like tough to ask people what they actually want in a new thing.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh yeah. It's in fact, it's the worst thing ever.

Chris Gammell: In fact, let's see one other one that I really liked. This is actually when you talked about at Supercon was the electroluminescent display. And it seemed like that was pretty spicy to work with too, because it was like really high voltage, right? Or you kept blowing up converters?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Oh yeah. Yeah, I did blow up a lot of chips. That's right. Yeah. That was another case where, well, let's see, what was the core problem there? It was, oh yeah, it was that the data sheet did not accurately spec how much current. Oh yeah, that's right. So there were supposed to be protection diodes inside this high voltage control chip. And so it has like 60 push-pull driver outputs, so you can get high voltage on the outputs. And that works. But they also spec'd protection diodes, so that if there was ever anything below ground or above VCC, it would just shunt the current off like it should. And either the diodes were not present, or they just had very, very low current, like super low current handling ability. Because I had some cases where there was like an inductive kick.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah, right. So it spiked up.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: The voltage was going, yeah, it was either going above VCC or below ground or something. And it was causing the chip to instantly blow up. And when the chips died, they would also take everything out down the line, all the way through the signal path back to the micro even. And it was, yeah, it was one of these things where it was like, you'd turn it on, it would be working, and then the whole thing would just die. It was like, well, that's it. And so then you'd have to rebuild the entire thing to even get one chance at seeing what happens. Right, right. So that took a while to, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I remember you, so you gave a Supercon talk about that too, I think, right?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's been so many experiments you've done. So, yeah. What are you working on these days? Like, what's upcoming on the channel? And you're not allowed to say that Verily told you you can't talk about it because, you know, this is you. So you're allowed to give a little hint here.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: It's true. Yeah, oh yeah, no, no. So this scanning, for EE projects, I really should build this electron microscope control because just yesterday I was collecting another animation with it. So I have these carbon nanotubes. You know, the Vantablack is basically a forest of carbon nanotubes standing up vertically. And there's this weird thing where if you pull on it, it starts unraveling, like pulling a thread out of a sweater. It's kind of weird. You can actually pull like a mile of carbon nanotubes out of a little square centimeter of forest of nanotubes. And it's weird because they self-align. Like if you basically tug on the string, this whole random looking carpet becomes a thread sort of automatically. And the process is weird. Like, why would that even happen? So what I did is I got scanning electron microscope animation, stop motion animation of this uncoiling and threading process happening like right at the junction where it's going on.

Chris Gammell: That's awesome. How did you actually, how did you instantiate the pull for the, that, that like, is like a stepper motor or something?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I did it by hand. So this is the thing. I'd like it to be a stepper motor and that's, that's the next generation. But no, I sat there for an hour and just twiddled the knob by a couple of microns every time for each frame.

Chris Gammell: Do you have, you have actuators inside of the SEM? Is that right? Like, how do you actually grab the thing?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: There's a couple of knobs on the outside and it's just a micrometer and so you just twist the knob and it moves the stage on the inside.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's just like, uh, that's kind of a good example of like the, the boringness of science sometimes is just twiddling the knob a little bit at a time. Huh?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: I literally sat there for an hour and a half, just turning a knob by like a 10th of a turn every time the frame was done.

Chris Gammell: What?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah. So that's what it takes, you know?

Chris Gammell: Science. Oh man. Yeah. That's great. That's great. Uh, other like, uh, chemistry type things that you're doing or what else is on the chemistry side of things? How many like concurrent things do you have going at once? I guess.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Kind of maybe about four or five or so. Some are sort of back burner. I actually do have another interesting E project. Um, for blind people, they want a, like a tactile tablet, like basically a tablet computer that has a physical display with like little pins that raise up and down. And a few companies have kind of worked on this a little bit, but I was looking for something like way more. Like impressive, like bigger. It's like currently like the state of the art is like piezo actuated plastic pins that move up and down by like a millimeter. You know, it's, it's, it's functional, but maybe it's not really that impressive. What we'd really like to have is almost like a pixel display, like a full on, like, you know, thousand by thousand pixel display of like physical pixels basically. And, uh, the way I'm going to implement this is by using Peltier junctions that heat up or cool down. And then you put like a, like a bubbly, like a, um, a soft chamber filled with a low boiling point fluid on there so that when you boil it or contract it, the bubble basically expands or contracts and it should be very fast. Oh wow. Okay.

Chris Gammell: That's exactly what I was going to ask about. Because I would imagine like the, it would have like a, a rise curve and a fall curve and you might not, you'd have to drive it both ways, I guess. Right.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of an interesting, it'll have a fair bit of like interesting E work. And then also this boiling point fluid and everything, which, which I know which one I want. It's just hard to get. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What is your source? Some of the stuff that you get is like some of it's eBay, it seems like, but some of it seems like you're not like making deals in like twin pines shopping mall parking lots.

Speaker ?: Are you at like two in the morning?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No, I wish I was though. I mean, those, those deals are, I mean, those are hard to come by.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: No, I think it's, it's annoying where companies are like, Oh, we're not going to sell to you because you're not a huge company or whatever. Everyone's just so worried about liability these days. It's kind of ridiculous. Um, you'd be surprised what you can get on, um, on eBay and other sources though. And some of it is like repurposing too. Like, um, I got a great example. Very recently I needed a source of radioactive material.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: And, um, they made these static brushes for cleaning records, phonograph records back in the sixties called the static master. And people that like these brushes like them because they actually have a radioactive element in there. And the radioactivity causes you to ionize the air and it actually discharges like static cling. Like it gets rid of static cling inherently just because it's emitting ions. And it's, it's very active. It's actually 500 microcuries of polonium 210, which is the same substance that the, no, the Russians used to kill their spy back in London a few years ago.

Chris Gammell: Oh my God.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: And 500 microcuries is probably, probably more than enough to kill a person. And so it's just, it's very well like contained within this metal matrix. But if I wanted to get banned on YouTube, what I would do is show how to extract the polonium from one of these sources.

Chris Gammell: So if Ben disappears someday, if applied science is no more on YouTube, we've found out why.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: That video would definitely get taken down. So that's, I know not to do that, but it's still fun to play with this polonium source. It's, it's incredibly hot. 500 microcuries.

Chris Gammell: Just imagine all the safety comments you're going to get on there. Ben, your fingers are going to fall off. You're going to need a rate. You're going to need a robot finger at some point. Yeah, exactly. I know. I love it. And what is the radio, radioactivity for? Is it just some unknown thing yet?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Well, well, it's a secret project. Okay. That one, I'll give you that one. You know what?

Chris Gammell: That radioactivity, we'll give you a secret project on that one. Oh, that's great. Well, Ben, thank you for coming back. I can't believe it's been eight years. Let's try and make it less than eight years next time. I know. That's crazy. I'm very grateful that we get to hang out at some conferences. What are some conferences you hang out at if people want to maybe hang out with you?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Supercon for sure. Supercon is the only one that I basically go to regularly. I probably should start doing more, but I don't know, the current work schedule and everything. I think Supercon is the one you can always count on at least.

Chris Gammell: Maybe KiCon in 2020. We'll see. Yeah, actually, maybe so. What month is it? The 11th, 13th. Yeah, 11th to 13th. Okay. It's in Switzerland, but come on. I mean, it's CERN. That's so cool.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: September sounds pretty good. No, it's good.

Chris Gammell: Where can people find your stuff online if they don't already know?

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: You can search for Applied Science videos or just Applied Science on YouTube.

Chris Gammell: Great, great. And support them on Patreon. It's a great Patreon and supports direct science. That's great. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for being on the show.

Ben Krasnow 8 Years On: Yeah, thanks very much.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. Thank you.