Doin’ Science in the National Radio Quiet Zone
Stuff You Should Know
iHeartPodcasts
4.5 • 82.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
West Virginia is home to sensitive radio telescopes that could easily pick up your cell phone’s signal on Mars. And the cell reception on Mars is about as good as it is in the NRQZ, since cell towers are banned in the interest of furthering astronomy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:05.5 | Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. |
| 0:15.1 | Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. |
| 0:19.7 | And we're being really quiet. Here on Stuff's here too. And we're really quiet. |
| 0:21.6 | Here on stuff you should know because we're doing an episode on the National Radio Quiet Zone. |
| 0:29.3 | We're not a radio show. |
| 0:30.4 | We're a podcast, but we feel in solidarity that we should be quiet to. |
| 0:35.0 | That's right. |
| 0:35.8 | And we're not talking about Palm Springs |
| 0:37.8 | with their oppressive band on outdoor music. |
| 0:41.2 | Oh, I hadn't heard about that. |
| 0:43.0 | Yeah, you can't play music outside like by your pool. |
| 0:46.5 | Huh. |
| 0:47.1 | At all? |
| 0:48.4 | Supposedly at all. |
| 0:50.0 | Well, I guess it probably just depends on your neighbor. |
| 0:53.4 | I think they're pretty strict about it. I mean, I've never been to Palm Springs and stayed there. We should ask our friend who lives there. Yeah. Because maybe full-time residents have a little more leeway, but, you know, they do it because people, they don't want people just going and renting houses and just blowing out the neighborhood every weekend. No, this isn't Fire Island, guys. Right. No, we're not talking about Palm Springs, though, I guess, is the upshot of that, right? No, we're talking about the opposite of Palm Springs, which is Appalachia. West Virginia. Yeah. It's kind of the opposite of Palm Springs, if there is such a thing. I think even if you folded the United States map in half, they would be pretty close to one another. They would smear one another. Someone's going to do that. Yeah. They're going to fold a map up and send us a correction. Yeah, they'll be like, Josh was way off. Well, you know where they might fold a map up is in the National Radio Quiet Zone, because they still use those things. |
| 1:45.4 | It's a great place to fold a map because, yeah, like you said, that's what you need to get around in a lot of cases. |
| 1:51.4 | And let's just cut to the chase here, Chuck. |
| 1:54.1 | The National Radio Quiet Zone does not mean you can't play your music like that. |
| 1:58.7 | They're saying that this is an area where |
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