Alternative energy expert Mike Brown appeared on Wednesday's program, delving into Tesla, inventions and power sources. The Tesla brain fascinates me, Brown said. Tesla, who held over 700 patents, was probably the smartest man of the 20th Century, he opined. In constructing some of his projects, Brown said he attempts to place himself into Tesla's mindset.

He discussed his recent creation of a tabletop model of a Tesla System which pulls lightning out of the sky, using it to charge a capacitor, and then extracting the energy for electric power. The Earth is actually a giant capacitor. In fact, "the whole planet is charged with electricity," Brown said. More on his device is detailed here.

Interestingly, Brown is not a proponent of hydrogen, which he believes is being pushed to divert attention away from a more practical fuel source-- farm products. He said the huge bounty of American agriculture's soy and corn could be processed to make enough fuel to free the US from dependence on foreign oil in a short space of time, if such a project was embarked on as national imperative.