Episode 013 – Fracking to Artificial Intelligence

Episode Summary:

In this energy-themed episode of The Continuum, Adam and Kyle explore the messy middle ground between curiosity and cluelessness. They kick off with a dive into fracking—what it is (or might be), how it works, and its environmental implications—before veering off into discussions about natural vs. manmade materials, the mechanics of power generation, and whether burning things is inherently evil.

The episode spirals into marveling at modern engineering—like bridges, tunnels, and the Channel Tunnel—while questioning how we haven’t all drowned under the English Channel. From there, the pair muse on domain names, copyright expiration, and whether there’s a guy named “Mr. Internet” running the whole thing.

Along the way, expect commentary on Jurassic Park, Gladiator, Die Hard, nostalgic cinema trips, water pressure conspiracies, and a teaser for an upcoming episode about AI.

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Episode Transcription

Adam & Kyle – All right. Welcome back to the Continuum podcast. My name is Adam. His name is Kyle. We’ve got to continue our talk on fracking. You told me you were going to tell me everything you knew about it. Because I know nothing. Well, when I say no stuff about it again, nothing at all. So where do we start? Where do we start?
Adam & Kyle – So, my, my, I’ll. I’ll quickly explain what I. What I think fracking is. Mm hmm. And fracking, I think, is a form is a way of mining gas. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Now, so some sort of mining so that, you know, we could over both be royal, both be wrong on that. So that’s good. Well, I think it’s the way they, they extract gas as a natural gas for energy.

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Adam & Kyle – Right. And I want to say it’s natural gas. So they put the word natural gas in to make it sound better for the environment. But it’s actually really not a I don’t know what’s what’s on natural gas for it was a man made. Well, we we know a man made gas suppose but that you know, we just had a couple of beers, a glass of wine and a massive roast.
Adam & Kyle – I think I know what manmade gases.
Adam & Kyle – Exactly. No, but yeah, you say natural gas. What does that mean? Something on the periodic table? I expect so.
Adam & Kyle – Well.
Adam & Kyle – We’ll get back to fracking, but this just kind of always makes me think when they. There’s a difference between natural and unnatural or manmade. But I always think something they have to have got those materials from somewhere. Hmm. Yeah. Plastic is manmade. However, it’s still a natural product. Product? Yeah. They would have extracted the polymers and rubbers or whatever from plants and have a natural origin.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah. So that’s why what you’re saying is, why can’t we just chuck it in the sea so you can? Well, from what I’ve seen, it’s not that bad for the sea. I don’t know. It’s something to do with how long it takes to break down, isn’t it? So I suppose it is natural, but then it. Oh if it takes 30 years to break down, that’s really not good.
Adam & Kyle – But then why don’t they just burn? It adds. Because it gives off. O gives of unnatural gas. Manmade gas? Well, there you go. We’ve we’ve come full circle. You go. Okay. Yeah. Alright. But you would probably say the harm, isn’t it, to burn things like that. Well burning anything is apparently bad for the environment as we’ve mentioned before.
Adam & Kyle – But what still astounds me is when you talk about power generation and you know, all this whole energy, this is the energy episode, isn’t it? But when you talk about generating another another episode, we know nothing about.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah.
Adam & Kyle – But when you generate power, even even coal. But what do you call a coal station that’s generating power? All they’re doing is they taking a whole bunch of coal from way. From what I understand, in my mind, they take all this coal, they’re burning massive amounts of fire just to make steam to turn a turbine. That’s that’s all that they’re doing.
Adam & Kyle – They’re not they’re not like trying to convert it in any other way. But even coal, they’ve they’ve found ways to kind of extract all the nasties, if you can call it out or whatever, or maybe not all the nasties and everything kind of a lot better over the last ten years. Yeah, yeah, sure. It’s even worse. Yeah. I mean, acid rain was a massive thing, you know, when we were growing up.
Adam & Kyle – I want to say when I was in my teens. I used to watch this thing on Discovery Channel where they’d have acid rain and show you these statues of these, like, statues almost. Do you want to call them melting due to the erosion over time? But that’s no longer a thing. Now, I think there’s quite a program on this because, yeah, I remember us always talking about it when I was at school or I remember not always.
Adam & Kyle – I mean, it wasn’t a common thing because I don’t think we ever really, you know, you wouldn’t experience acid rain, would we, for or would we. I don’t think over a long period of time. I think that’s to do something with was it maybe going to go either nitrogen or sulfur So it was probably the bad things. Again, I’m not a chemist.
Adam & Kyle – I not if you had to put it, if you had to put nitrogen or sulfur in like a small box next to each other and asked me to pick which one is the one, I probably still wouldn’t be able to do it, even if it had the periodic planet number number next to it, I still wouldn’t know. Yeah, Yeah.
Adam & Kyle – It’s onto on to fracking quickly now. I want to go back to it. I didn’t do any I didn’t, haven’t done any research on this, but from what I understand is how they extract it. The way I would extracted in my mind is they basically drill a massive hole into the ground. Yeah, you know, we’ll put the pumps there, but the gas is sitting in, let’s call it these veins.
Adam & Kyle – You know, the same. You’ll have the mining of played like Minecraft so I’m sure it’s exactly the same. You’ll get like the stuff inside. Perfectly pixelated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ll hit these veins or these little spots where they’ll be gas and more likely to be gas and in order for them to get the gas out, they pump, I want to say they pump water, but it’s probably a mix of slurries and everything else into the ground, into these veins.
Adam & Kyle – And due to, you know, just it’s just going to force the gas upwards or it’s going to displace the gas, if you can see that. Yeah. How they actually get the gas out there must be there must be a sucking pump and a pumping pump. Just pull it into a big tank or something. So what’s the idea of it?
Adam & Kyle – And is it supposed to be like another way, another way of us getting hold of energy? Then is it just another form of energy? I think it’s quite some. Yeah. It’s supposed to give you. It’s supposed to be another form of energy, the same way we’ve got coal, you killer, and it’s just going to gas so you can using those resources that earth’s natural resources in order to you know oil as well.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah. To allow you to create energy. But again all you’re going to be doing is just burning a big pot of water just to create steam, to just turn your turbines, creates electricity. Well, just push it through so you can turn your stable really solar energy then and wind when wind power. Yeah. They’re the only two, right. Renewable energies There’s I think there’s some controversy around that as well though, because of how much energy it takes to make em.
Adam & Kyle – You know, I don’t know. You have solar panels in your house?
Adam & Kyle – No, no.
Adam & Kyle – You know, no, I think I’m going to at some point. I think we are so solar. Yeah. I think, you know, it’s got to be something that everyone will have at some point, especially with the price of electricity and everything at the moment, surely. Well, if if I were the government’s, why didn’t solar powered companies like. Well, because they don’t have wings.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah. Very good.
Adam & Kyle – If you were the government it’s always the government’s and always is. And I was issuing these like new pulled permits, permits and whatever. I would say that every house has to have solar panels on every car that’s going to make, has to have some solar panels or some sort of renewable energy source like wind at the top of a safe block of flats.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah, because you don’t see many that’s not dangerous around these same those things when they like catch fire, they’re still spinning. I’ve seen a video of I’ve seen a video of when one’s spinning at full tilt. It looks like it’s in a storm or something and it’s fine. It’s just an it catches things off and the whole thing just looks it doesn’t spin off it like it hits the bottom pole or something.
Adam & Kyle – Earth upright and it shatters into shrapnel. Basically. You go, Yeah, that’s the good. That’s why they’re out in the middle of fields or clifftops. So no, no, you don’t see them around are neck of the woods, do you. But like you go down to Devon and Cornwall. Yeah. And they seem to be all over the place there. Yeah.
Adam & Kyle – But again maybe put them, put them out in the ocean. That’s a good point. But then can they make them stable enough and how do they stop ships go crashing into. That’s. I don’t have a clue. Even I don’t even know how they build bridges to be 100% honest with you. You know, when you know with your map there’s a bridge, isn’t there?
Adam & Kyle – From I think it’s from Denmark, Sweden. And it’s massive. Is that right? I don’t I don’t even know where it is. I feel like that’s the thing. It’s a little place in Europe, but I don’t know where. And I think there’s a massive bridge that you can drive from Denmark to Sweden. I want to say it’s like a couple of kilometers long, maybe longer.
Adam & Kyle – Or.
Adam & Kyle – Okay. Anyway, like you say, how how did they make that? Well, you’ve got to you’ve got to get the I’m assuming if it’s over sea or something, you’ve got to be able to get some kind of foundation in place. Yeah, exactly. And I suppose you can only do it where it’s where the water is only so deep, you know, if it’s more than say, oh right, 30 meters deep, then you can’t do it on a SCOBY.
Adam & Kyle – Okay, hold on. It gets to me if it gets too deep. How the hell do you. I don’t understand how the Channel Tunnel works. How the hell did they build that? They go back in the eighties. How is that not been, like, compressed by all of the water and crushed in the summer? Have you been for? Yeah, I suppose just.
Adam & Kyle – No, I’ve never never been in over. I don’t trust it was made in the eighties were met. I don’t trust that thing. Yeah. It’s incredible what these engineers can do. I mean if I think these bridges now if I have to think of this logically, because, you know, builders in this country can’t build a house when it’s raining, can they?
Adam & Kyle – You know, that’s that’s just a how to build a tunnel under the sea. So if I was actually I think I knew that. But yeah, I’m going to say they probably drill into like the bedrock or something, don’t they. Yeah. Let’s, let’s go with that. What were you going to say? Oh I’m assuming they built the tunnel to lower it, connect it all up and then just extract all the water around with some silicon.
Adam & Kyle – Are you talking about the whole tunnel that I’m talking about? What you thinking about? Okay, let’s talk about let’s talk about a bridge. And so tunnel was tunnels, yet you’re expecting they’re going to make like what, A massive tube. Yeah. And connect it to the waterfall often. Yeah. On and on and on. But we expect to see some tubes made out of stone, like a big old block of cement.
Adam & Kyle – Now, I wouldn’t be strong enough with it. I don’t know. Metal. It’s got to be metal. The thing is, what’s weird about water, though, is the deeper you get, obviously, the more pressure there is. And, you know, I didn’t really think about this much or much about this, But, you know, obviously there’s some people talk about the pressure.
Adam & Kyle – But again, I get as I’m talking about the sun kind of go, I’m suddenly I can absolutely absolute lunatic. But when you talk about pressure, I always think, you know, pressure inside a gas canister or, you know, that’s that’s hard to contain, but it’s just presented by the amounts of weight, isn’t it? Because you think if there’s a liter of water on top of police or water on top of a liter of water, you know, you keep going further down.
Adam & Kyle – It’s just going to be more and more weight.
Adam & Kyle – Mm.
Adam & Kyle – It’s kind of push down on top of each other isn’t it. I know you’ll get that, but I don’t know the answer there. But then again water so fluid it’s, it’s weird. Like true, the literal definition of water is fluid. So yeah, that’s fluid and weird. Weird. The water’s water is quite annoying because I don’t know if you had in your house is where you’ve been.
Adam & Kyle – So it’s just, yeah, I need water in my house. But. But no, I mean, like, have you had issues where water just get you know, you get a drip in the ceiling or whatever, you see a patch and a form and it’s like, well, how’s that coming from Obviously it’s usually the bathroom, but then you go into the bathroom, you can’t see anything.
Adam & Kyle – You know, there’s no yeah, there’s no clues as to where that water’s coming from. And it’s it gets through the tiniest of gaps and it just destroys your house pretty annoying. Water can travel uphill as well. Concept? No, no. I think it’s a phenomenon That’s where water. No, I’m not going to go. You’re just make here as well.
Adam & Kyle – Now you’re making a you’re making it up. Okay, well, start again in Jurassic Park. What was that thing? Do remember what you did with the drips of water on it? On my hand and how it runs a different way. It never goes in the same place. But I have to watch again, because it probably bears absolutely no relevance to what we’re talking about.
Adam & Kyle – Oh, I have no idea. We’re going to have to. We should have a movie fun at some point scores, Jurassic World Watch Alone or Dead Sea Outcast whilst we’re watching Jurassic Park. Yes, we could do. I mean, I just I think if people really want to listen to us just eating popcorn and Eminem is the whole movie that’s literal and I actually enjoy them.
Adam & Kyle – And some tickets. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. For anyone that hasn’t heard the previous episode, maybe a few years ago, I can’t remember. Yeah, but did you I don’t know if you’ve done it, but have you gone to have you checked it like The View cinemas and seeing that they, they play old films as well. I didn’t realize this. Yeah.
Adam & Kyle – From Todd. I wanted to go Oh yeah. I was going to go with the other night. Well, I really wanted to go. The other night I was actually playing Gladiator, the Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe. And I thought, Man, that would be a such a good form to go watch in the cinema again. You wouldn’t be surprised to hear that.
Adam & Kyle – I don’t like that film. Part of I on a podcast with you. I don’t get it. I don’t know. I just find that film really irritating. Annoying and boring. But you’re not entertained. No, it was not. The action parts were all right. You know, you’re not taking that away from the film, but the story was boring. Come on.
Adam & Kyle – It’s. That’s all, you know, it was cool. I enjoy this. And again, when I was younger, watching it, it’s. That’s why maybe I got to watch it. You know, it’s a love story because he’s kind of is you know, I won’t give any spoilers away for people that haven’t seen a movie that’s almost, what, 20 years old and you might as well just spoil away this.
Adam & Kyle – There’s a there’s a statute of limitations, isn’t there? But well, when he goes and he finds his wife at the end, you know, in the in the afterlife, did you know that there was a I’ll go into weird past the incidents? I don’t remember. But there was supposed to be a supposed to be a gladiator. Two like a sequel that was supposed to be brought us through with I think this place with Russell Crowe as well.
Adam & Kyle – And I feel like I said this to somebody else, and I looked it up and then it wasn’t a thing. So maybe I dreamt this. It’s that’s quite a common, thick smashed, more common thing to happen, isn’t it? I often have dreams or I often come out with things. I’m like, Maybe that was a tree. Actually, I can’t remember.
Adam & Kyle – But I’m going back to the cinema of nostalgic films. I went and saw Die Hard in the cinema. The first one? Yeah, the first one. It was the 25th year anniversary. I one of my mates. A massive die hard fan, right? Yes. Let’s go watch Die Hard in the cinema on the big screen, because it came out, it was 85.
Adam & Kyle – I Yeah I think it was, Yeah. It was quite old. Yeah. I was too young. I was too young to see it. Right. Yeah. I was about seven or eight months old so even so. Yeah. And by the way 88 was there when I was still too young to see it. So yeah. So we were like, What did you think of it?
Adam & Kyle – Let’s go watch it. The cinema. Yeah, it was, it was awesome because it’s an awesome film, but we might have gone out for drinks first because before the cinema and I had a few too many and my mate fell asleep and he was snoring in the cinema. Oh, man, that sucks so bad. The heart is awesome. And there’s always that debate of whether it’s a Christmas movie as well, of course, because that’s what I think.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah, I’m in the in the. Yes it is because I’ll watch it every Christmas now as well for the post I want to say three or four years we’ve been watching them. So the first one you know, the second one’s a bit of a throwaway. Third one’s good. See I thought the third one was did average. I enjoyed the second one.
Adam & Kyle – Okay.
Adam & Kyle – Well listen to their own. Yeah, well, I’m talking to a guy that doesn’t like Gladiator, so. Exactly. There you go. We’ve all we’ve all got our own opinions. Definitely. It’s it’s not for us to say which ones right and wrong. And I’m pretty sure most people are going to agree with me and say you’re wrong. It’s. Yeah, but it’s my opinion.
Adam & Kyle – They’re not allowed to say that. Okay. Yeah, this is true.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah.
Adam & Kyle – But now I saw I want to go to the cinema and go watch an old film again, like Gladiator or one of those was going to keep an eye on because again, they don’t do it very often. No films can say How often is that. Yeah, I’ll check. But it makes me wonder how how does the rights work of something like that when it’s that old the the film industry with regards to like payments, ticket sales and things like that.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah. Yeah. Well I dunno. Imagine they get a cut still unless the reason the cinemas do it is because the films just sort of come out of its copyright period or something and that means 100% profits to the cinema. They can just play royalty free or whatever, but that can’t be a thing can it? I think something can become, what do they call it, like a public and public domain?
Adam & Kyle – Yeah, like a public domain. I think after a set amount of time, nothing it does unless you unless you renew it, unless you’re in your copyrights. And that’s like patents and that. So yeah, because I’m pretty sure people there’s people out there that will sit and wait for patents to not be renewed, same of same as they do with internet domains.
Adam & Kyle – I think it’s a big company recently or in the last few years, didn’t renew their domain name in time and somebody else jumped on it and they had to pay out loads of money for that guy to take something, some sort of Facebook or something was amiss. Yeah, it was something like Marathon Apple was Apple. I mean, we could look up that guy got fired because that go with it, I’ll say for sure.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah. One job for whoever it is for his voice between Apple Marks and Spencer. I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody set up a domain before on on these browsers or sorry on the internet say browsers or something like an old person. But when I had to do it recently recently you can also set the amount of time that you want this thing to alter a new for so you can set that you want it for the next 3 to 5 years.
Adam & Kyle – So yeah.
Adam & Kyle – It’s like what happened? Did someone just forget to put on their calendar or. Yeah, yeah. So really at that point you’ve just got to just say, well, it’s ours now. We’re going to buy the rights for the next hundred years. It’s not going to cost them billions is it, Because they own it now, today. And who are these people selling?
Adam & Kyle – Just domain names. This is the question I asked. I just you two got to decide that they can sell the domain names. Yeah, they just sit in on everything, every domain in the world, and that’s it. They, you know, they’re just reaping rewards from somebody going, Oh, I need to be the widow. Widow? The continuum.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah, well, yeah.
Adam & Kyle – But. Oh, he’s going to try and come up with something hilarious. But I couldn’t, I didn’t want it to go, I didn’t want it to come out too rude, which was the only thing that was going through my head at the time was the only thing I could think of is porn. But yeah, I’ve often thought that is the way.
Adam & Kyle – Do you think GoDaddy they can they sell these domains. What gives them the rights to solve the domain? Yeah. And the right. Because if I go on to go daddy and I’ll go and a when I’m another post what’s another hosting site, I’m going to say great. One, two, three. Yeah. They go but if you go on those two sites they’ll tell you if it’s available or not.
Adam & Kyle – So how do they know if it’s available and got an index somewhere that sells them? Oh yeah, that one’s available. That one’s not. Do they also just quickly go into Google or they send their boss up and see if it’s available? Well, they ask the the architect, you know, from the Matrix. Yeah. Well don’t be selling something like that.
Adam & Kyle – Direction is an architect out there. Someone is just like doing all of that Mr. Internet Could be God, I think it’s not real business. Think. Oh, okay. That’s blowing out the water. There. I say that in jest. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions. So. Yeah. And religions, yes, they’re all entitled to their own religions. Yeah. Yeah. We are fully encompassing here.
Adam & Kyle – We’re all one big family. Yeah, yeah, we’re all except for Flat-Earthers. They can, they can laugh. Who is the government or UKIP? Everyone associated with UKIP. So. Yeah, right. Well, I’m going to leave now then. Now you kind of say stuff like that. Oh, God, Where were we? Domain names. Yeah. So Mr. Internet is.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah.
Adam & Kyle – Well, it’s an interesting thing is now the Internet. But I know Southpark did an episode on it, didn’t they, where they had to go and restart the internet because the Internet went down to remember that. That was hilarious. No, that’s going to restart the Internet. And obviously no one had no no one had Internet. They were like camps where you would like somebody would just draw things on a computer screen.
Adam & Kyle – And I just remember eradicated, they’re searching people.
Adam & Kyle – I mean.
Adam & Kyle – It was such a messed up episode. But yeah, surely the internet can be switched off and just shut down. Surely it’s got to be somewhere. Yeah, that’s, that’s the idea Isn’t this that it can because I think you’ve got all these governments involved with the internet as well that will kind of, if I can say, manage what Internet you see and what you don’t.
Adam & Kyle – But in saying that. Yeah but they must be able to turn it off. I don’t know. Yeah. There’s, there’s got to be a switch somewhere. There’s that a big box somewhere which contains the internet. Well there’s got to be adds because if you start thinking about things like I, you know, I think in the news lately there’s, there’s, there’s this thing about this A.I. technology called black It’s a chat bot.
Adam & Kyle – Mm hmm. Yeah. G g. So basically, you can ask it to do things, and it does. But, you know, you can get it to write a story or something. Yeah. And you can write a story for you and then you can make changes to that story, things like that. Yeah. You know, it could, it can writes content and information in ways that you once said to me.
Adam & Kyle – So if we could just say, Yeah, write a script for the Continuum in the style of Adam and call based on Yeah, wrestling and Die Hard, you know, starting on wrestling, finishing on Hot. And it will somehow it will get will get information skill of our episodes do you think. Yes. Into our like how we do everything. Yeah and just have all that information just kind of put it out there but this is in the space of 2 seconds.
Adam & Kyle – Mm. That it’s going to process this information is pretty crazy. And if that’s the way it is now.
Adam & Kyle – Mm hmm.
Adam & Kyle – That’s the area that we know about.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah.
Adam & Kyle – Yeah. Let’s talk more about on the next one, because that’s all the time we’ve got. And I actually quite like the thought of talk, the thought of artificial intelligence and stuff. It’s actually quite a conspiracy, man. Quite an interesting topic. So let’s get onto that and we’ll leave it there to thanks. Heads will catch you guys on the later one.
Adam & Kyle – See you later, Jess.


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