307: From Super Soakers to Heat Engines with Dr. Lonnie Johnson

The inventor of the Super Soaker, Dr. Lonnie Johnson, joins Matt to talk about his most ambitious project yet: the JTEC, a heat engine with no moving parts that converts low-grade waste heat straight into electricity. They get into how it actually works, why Johnson thinks it could run far more efficiently than what we use today, and the long road from a 2003 idea to the first commercial unit. Plus how a billion-dollar water gun quietly funded a quarter-century of clean-energy research. Chapters: * 00:00: Intro * 05:06: Dr. Lonnie Johnson Interview * 32:36: Previous Episode Feedback Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhbPajWdgUk Support the show directly: https://stilltbd.fm/join/ Audio version of the podcast: https://stilltbd.fm YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@stilltbd YouTube membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4-aWB84Bupf5hxGqrwYqLA/join Get in touch: https://stilltbd.fm/contact/ Follow us on: Mastodon - https://mastodon.social/@mattferrell Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/mattferrell.bsky.social Undecided with Matt Ferrell: https://www.youtube.com/@undecidedtechnology Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.