Learning From Podcasts: Smart Car Washes; Electric Planes; Good & Bad Peanut Butter

 An interesting and informative podcast can act as a stress reliever from all the family visits, gift exchanges, and lofty expectations we burden ourselves with during the holidays.

In the midst of massive overeating, family that overstayed their welcome, and the frantic scrolling during cyber shopping deal days, I was still able to tease out nuggets of valuable information from my podcast choices during Thanksgiving week.

Car Washes Go High-Tech

 This week, I learned that technology has even reached the venerable car wash. In the October 15th episode, host Zachary Crockett of The Economics Of Everyday Things, interviewed Eric Wulf, the CEO of the International Carwash Association — an industry group that represents car wash owners and suppliers.

Holy crap, even car washes have a nefarious, faceless organizations. Anyway, car washes are now a $16 billion dollar business in the U.S. There are around 80,000 of them in North America. And on any given day, they service eight million vehicles. 

The most surprising part about this episode? Car washes are rich in technology. For example, in years past, a customer would push on the gas or hit the brake, and it would cause the cars to pile up in the car wash tunnel. Now, carwashes have a system called “NoPileups.” If one car jumps outside this box, it shuts the car wash down. Where, in years past, that could create three or four or five, six-car pile-ups and nobody knew.

Eric Wulf, the carwash guru, says of the vehicles entering the car wash tunnel,  "We know how tall it is, how wide it is, how long it is, the contour of the vehicle. So, for instance, trucks, we don’t feel it’s efficient to throw soap in the back of an open truck bed. So we’re going to, you know, get that soap to a certain level, shut it off. The open bed goes. We turn it back on to get the sides in the back of the car. "

The most obvious change via technology is the disappearance of brushes in car wash tunnels. Now, touchless carwashes use high pressures of air and water instead of mechanical agitation to push the dirt and grime out of every nook and cranny, no matter a vehicle’s model.

Vermont company tests electric-powered planes

First, it was cars that became electric, which was good for climate change but bad because we had to listen to Elon Musk spew nonsense. In the last two years, the boat industry has been exploring electric-powered boats. On the November 24th episode of Unsung Science, host David Pogue introduced listeners to Beta Technologies, a Vermont-based company that is building, testing, and flying six-passenger vertical takeoff electric powered planes.

I thought electric planes were about as feasible as jetpacks and flying cars. Beta co-founder Kyle Clark begs to differ. Clark's company is building these planes in a 200,00 square-foot facility that's the size of three football fields. Clark points to several breakthroughs, including
Beta deploying its ALIA aircraft to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida —  which is the first manned electric aircraft to be delivered to the Air Force.

Then, Beta Technologies and Archer Aviation, two leaders in the electric plane industry, are collaborating on the adoption of a shared charging system for electric aircraft, one that any eVTOL model can use. As part of the deal, Archer purchased several Beta charging stations.

Clark tells Pogue that UPS is interested in buying his planes for movement of packages and cargo. Clark views the future as bright for electric-powered planes because battery technology continues to improve quickly, and manufacturing methods to continue to evolve rapidly.

It's possible that electric-powered planes carrying passengers could become a reality before self-driving cars.

Salad With A Side Of Fries investigates peanut butter

I love Salad With A Side Of Fries. It's a nutrition and health podcast that doesn't advocate a NO or ALL diet. No carbs, all protein. No eating for 18 hours. All red meat all the time because someone said our ancestors ate that way.

Host Jenn Trepeck is a staunch advocate of informed, common-sense eating. Her podcast does these periodic Nutrition Nugget episodes that only run about 15 minutes. These mini-sodes focus on one food or food group.

On the November 10th episode, Trepeck discussed the nutrition facts and what to look for when reading ingredients to determine which types of peanut butters give us the best nutritional value because while all will be called “peanut butter,” the products can range from an almost whole food to an ultra-processed food.

For example, peanut butter with partially hydrogenated oil, hydrogenated oil, or palm oil are to be avoided, as are low-fat varieties because they contain more sugar. Peanut butter is rich in protein, minerals, and vitamins, but it can also be high in calories, sodium, and unsaturated fat. Trepeck says, "The healthiest peanut butters are free of added sugar and made with just one or two ingredients."

Trepeck's recommendation is to eat peanut butter that contains minimal ingredients, is free of additives, preservatives, added sugar, and other sweeteners, low in sodium, and rich in protein and heart-healthy fats.

Finally, here's a weird food pairing. As we've learned, peanut butter can be healthy choice food. Yet, when making a PB&J sandwich, jelly sticks out as a sweet, low-fiber, nutrient-lacking food.