I wanted to employ one of my overly torturous metaphors for this episode, and it was going to involve a crowd of fans and paparazzi waiting for a celebrity to make an appearance on a red carpet.

But I didn't want to date myself because I'm only vaguely aware of people who are famous

in the present moment.

And I also wanted to future-proof myself so I couldn't just name someone from the

present moment that will be forgotten in the unknown future when you'll actually listen to

this.

So here's what I decide.

The metaphor stays because of course it does.

But our celebrity is Brad Braddington. I want you to imagine this scene. It's the red carpet.

It's the night of the Oscars or the Emmys or the participation trophy ceremony for your kids

soccer game. That's not the essential part of

the metaphor. What matters is who's here. Brad Braddington's adoring fans, curious onlookers,

and of course the paparazzi ready to take their shot. In our analogy, Brad Brandington is a particle,

an electron, a proton, even a neutrino, if it felt like it. The crowd of

onlookers and fans, that's the material. It's a substance like air or water or diamond or the

inside of your eyeball, which is mostly water and hopefully not much diamond. Oh, and those paparazzi,

they're the most important part.

I'm talking today with the help of Brad Braddington about something called Cherankov radiation,

which I prefer to call light boom, but as usual, nobody listens to me much.

It's called Cherankov radiation because it's named after Soviet physicist Pavel

Turingov. He didn't really understand what he was seeing, but he took great notes. And by the time

we figured out what was going on, his name was already attached to it. So not bad, Pavel. And he did his

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