Mark Divine 0:47

Oh, man, it’s great. And thanks for reaching out it was. I’ll just say this upfront for the listener. But Mark and I met down at a place called The Wizard Academy and just kind of a fun. In fact, just the name of Roy, Roy’s school attracted me before I knew anything about Roy. He’s like, I’d love to be a wizard. But we met at The Wizard Academy. And that was years ago, where Roy plied us with wine while we tried to learn the theory of invention, which is pretty awesome. 

Mark Fox 1:14

Right. Right. 

Mark Divine 1:15

I want to come back to that. But anyway, so it’s good to see you again. And I always start this show by just asking, kind of like the formative question of like, where are you from? And what were your early influences that led you to become a space engineer and got you into kind of like all that fascinating, you know, field of invention and creativity?

Mark Fox 1:36

Yeah, I mean, as far as the rocket stuff, so I grew up and I live in Cocoa Beach now. And this is where, I’m actually in the house I actually grew up in so I grew up near Cape Canaveral. My dad was a rocket scientist. He worked on the Air Force Titan motor, and I’m like, you know, I don’t want anything to do with rockets. I just was around them my whole life. So it’s like, I graduated 1983. I was a chemical engineer, my best friend was a nuclear physicist. And we were hanging drywall for $3.50 an hour. So, so this is not going to cut it. And you nobody was hiring anybody back in 1983. It was just a slump in hiring. Right?

Mark Divine 2:09

Right. 

 

Mark Fox 2:09

And then somebody said, Hey, if you’ve ever put your own application to the Cape to Morton FAI called, they just want to shovel processing contract, and like, Nah, never heard of them. So I put them on resume there. And that was one of the most interesting malicious compliance things that I’ve ever seen. I walk in and I’m expecting, you know, a bunch of hard interview questions. And the guy says, so we’re Morton Thiokol. We build solid rocket motors, speciality chemical and salt. It pays $12.14 an hour. 

I go, What am I going to be doing? And he opens a manila folder with my resume runs his finger down. He goes, How do I know engineering stuff? I was like, okay, when do I start? He goes, now. I go, can I go home? So I found out it was a cost plus contract, right? And basically, this is the head of HR was given the direction? Yeah, we got slots for 80 engineers. So if they have a degree and a heartbeat, I don’t care how dumb they are. Just hire him. And we’ll figure out how to get rid of them later. Right? Because they were losing money. 

 

Mark Divine 3:06

I love how our government works, geez. 

 

Mark Fox 3:07

So it’s like, okay, well…Yeah, I thought I’d be there, you know, a month or something. And I was there, like 17 years. So I was actually at the launch pad. The day challenger happened in January.

 

Mark Divine 3:15

I was just gonna ask you, if you were involved at that point, that was incredible. 

 

Mark Fox 3:20

Yeah, it was at the launch pad there. I’d been in the company two and a half years. So I ended up moving to Utah, to work on the redesign of the solid rocket boosters. And, you know, we don’t have time to go and maybe some other episode, but you know, everyone, yes, the O rings failed on the boosters. But there is, it’s not what you heard in the news, it’s not what you’ve seen on documentaries. 

 

Mark Divine 3:39

Right.

 

Mark Fox 3:39

None of that is true is a whole lot more that was behind the decisions and stuff. And 

 

Mark Divine 3:44

Really?

 

Mark Fox 3:44

Yeah, a lot a lot. 

 

Mark Divine 3:46

Give me a general idea of what you’re talking about? Because I you know, there’s been a lot of case studies inleadership done on that.

 

Mark Fox 3:52

There have been and they all revolve around management being stupid and not listening to engineers. And that’s that’s kind of crazy is so the short version is a solid rocket boosters never postpone the launch before. Because once you light them, they go.

 

Mark Divine 4:04

Right. 

 

Mark Fox 4:05

And um, the launch before Challenger, we actually canceled the launch because of the wave heights in the ocean because we had to recover the booster. It’s floating vertically and you have to take like a big cork plug put in the nozzle, pump the water out and make it buoyant. 

 

Mark Divine 4:21

Right.

 

Mark Fox 4:21

Well, we had lost, we had one of our divers gets sucked in the motor and couldn’t get out. So we ended up ended up dying. 

 

Mark Divine 4:28

Oh, my. 

 

Mark Fox 4:29

So we changed the criteria for wave height. So the NASA manager in charge of all our boosters, he was really upset that we’re here. Like who came up with this criteria? You did? We all did, right? Because we killed the person. So we changed the criteria. And he’s like, What happens if we just let them sink? You’re the customer. You can do that. That’s $20 million in hardware, but if you want to, so that’s what we did. We launched and they sank, and some bean counters somewhere probably filled out a piece of paper that said for his job description. He can always scrap $5 million worth of hardware so he ended up at NASA headquarters to explain to his bosses why he scrapped his hardware. So that that happened the launch before Challenger. So then when we said, you know, it’s too cold to launch, it’s in the direction of badness he’s like, prove it isn’t safe to launch, which is the opposite of what you’ve always done on a program because he was upset from the previous launch, right? 

 

Mark Divine 5:18

Mmhmm.

 

Mark Fox 5:19

And the answer is, have you ever flown anything colder in this? Yes, we’ve flown five or six missions colder than that? Is it out of specification? No. But there’s not a specification for O ring temperature. 

 

Mark Divine 5:28

Right.

 

Mark Fox 5:29

Right. So it wasn’t the direction of badness. But the punch line Mark, what happened, which you won’t read anywhere, is the external tank that had liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen. It leaked all the time. And it leaked, it leaked on the boosters. We know that because it was 36 degrees out and windy. But the boosters are nine degrees and 14 Fahrenheit. Now most people think windchill, windchill doesn’t exist unless you have a heartbeat, right? 

 

Mark Divine 5:54

Right.

 

Mark Fox 5:54

So there has to be something really keeping those boosters cold because 36 degree wind is a hot when compared to 9 and 14. So we did some calculations. So we know that’s what happened is the external tank leaked cyrogens on the O ring. So the O rings did fail. But the external tank had problems as well. And the number one issue on the program at the time, was the turbine blades on the main engines of the orbiter. We know that this big around, they’re going from ambient temperature to like 38,000 rpm in a second. 

 

Mark Divine 6:25

Wow, man.

 

Mark Fox 6:25

And then they’re getting thermal shock with his hydrogen, oxygen, they cracked all the time, so  you always had cracked blades. Everyone that saw what happened to the Challenger, well we finally lost a blade. And we were afraid this was going to happen or some day, right? So the reality is there’s a lot of finger pointing going on. Actually Ronald Reagan got on one of the conference calls with us. And he people started pointing fingers and he said, “Everybody shut the blank up”. And it was silence. 

 

Mark Divine 6:51

I love Ron.

 

Mark Fox 6:52

He goes, because this is the most technical achievement in the world. Fix it. And that was it. So you know, my company spent $5 more million in two and a half years fixing the boosters. Martin Marietta, who own the tank, the time they spent a billion. And then Rocketdyne on the on the turbine blades spent 2 billion but nobody ever heard about that in the news. 

 

Mark Divine 7:10

Right.

 

Mark Fox 7:10

Getting the other stuff fixed. Right. So, the O rings were an issue but and you know, when you get this finger pointing, these engineers said, you know that you shouldn’t have flown? Well, there’s always a handful of engineers on our rocket test to say I’m not comfortable with going because it’s, it’s a bomb, right? You’re trying to control it. 

 

Mark Divine 7:28

Yeah.

 

Mark Fox 7:28

And it’s so I always say as people the Space Shuttle Program was a 30 year experiment, like most rockets are, right? So…

 

Mark Divine 7:34

Right

 

Mark Fox 7:34

That’s the short shortest version I can give you. There’s a lot of other things that were happening at the same time. But it wasn’t just management, not listening to engineers. It’s much more complicated than that.

 

Mark Divine 7:45

The technology today that Elon and I assume NASA, although I don’t I have a different perspective on Artemis, and that, you know, hodgepodge lodge of people coming together to build a spaceship versus, you know, the very focused SpaceX. I guess there’s pros and cons. But how does that technology compared to what’s, you know, the Challenger and the space shuttle program? 

 

Mark Fox 8:07

A lot of the rocket stuff, right? I mean, the engines and stuff are not that different. 

 

Mark Divine 8:13

Ok.

 

Mark Fox 8:13

They use a methane or kerosene and oxygen. What is different by far obviously, is flying the boosters back to a barge or to a landing pad. That is, Mark if you have not seen that in real life, you have to come see Come Come stay at my house for one weekend. We can watch it.

 

Mark Divine 8:30

I would love to see that I have seen you know, Elon little videos of the thing landing on a barge I’m like, how do they do that? 

 

Mark Fox 8:36

It doesn’t. videos don’t do it.

 

Mark Divine 8:37

That’s Incredible

 

Mark Fox 8:38

It looks like George Jetson. I mean, it’s if you have an afternoon flight where the sun’s already setting, right? So you got some, you can see the first stage booster with the sunshine out, you see it turn around. And then you start calculating math and looking at, you know, explain this to people being engineers like, okay, you see that little gas that’s coming out of it? Well, that boosters this big. That gas is expanding 10 miles and a quarter of a second.

 

Mark Divine 9:03

Wow

 

Mark Fox 9:03

Or a 100th of a second. So it looks very odd to watch it come back and then it’s falling at Mach four Mach six or something. So you can’t, you can’t process. And when you see two of them from the heavy vehicle, when you see two boosters coming back to the launch pad, you know, they light up at about 80,000 feet, and then again, around 10,000 to slow it down. But it’s it comes screaming at that launch pad. It’s still it’s moving a clip, right before it gets to the ground. 

 

Mark Divine 9:28

It’s like crazy.

 

Mark Fox 9:28

It’s amazing. 

 

Mark Divine 9:29

So, they actually slow it down. So it just settles down to the launch pad or is that? 

 

Mark Fox 9:34

Yeah, I mean, I think probably 50-10,000 feet, it’s still going 500 miles an hour.

 

Mark Divine 9:39

Right

 

Mark Fox 9:40

And then it just is burning at the last second. And then it just hovers for a second and then stops and what’s interesting. It’s funny because where I live I live about eight miles from the launch pad. So just by the timing once it hits the ground, the sonic boom from eight minutes earlier, hits my house or hits where I’m at. So all the locals go, oh, well, that’s the sound it makes when it hits the ground. No, that’s the sonic boom from seven or eight minutes ago, and it just got here. And they don’t know people don’t believe me like, no, that’s not it like, well yeah it is.

 

Mark Divine 10:10

That is great. 

 

Mark Fox 10:10

Yeah, they’re amazing to watch. I mean, it’s weird Mark. I mean, it’s like, sometimes we have 2 a week or 3 a week, and I don’t you know, there’s one going there might be you may hear when why we’re doing this podcast, and then he’s launching that much. So, hats off to him, he’s doing awesome. 

 

Mark Divine 10:25

Oh, it’s amazing. If you had the opportunity to go out with SpaceX to Mars next week, would you go? 

 

Mark Fox 10:32

Not at this age.

 

Mark Divine 10:34

Yeah. 

 

Mark Fox 10:34

I just, I thought you were going to ask about working for them, is I have several friends that work there. And they, they’re on the grindstone.

 

Mark Divine 10:40

It’s brutal. Yeah.

 

Mark Fox 10:41

Yeah, they don’t last long. I mean, a lot of the engineers because they’re working…

 

Mark Divine 10:44

One of I’m sorry, their chief medical officer at NASA was recruited for SpaceX. He was one of our clients.

 

Mark Fox 10:51

Oh okay. 

 

Mark Divine 10:51

And thas been through all my training, Kokoro. And then he invited me up to SpaceX to talk to the launch team before they did their first human powered flight. And man, you know, some of the stories I got about the work ethic and just the grind, it’s intense.

 

Mark Fox 11:03

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 11:03

 the level of commitment required, but I loved I loved the culture, because they were like the Navy SEALs, they were like a failure is not an option culture. Meaning like, we’re just going to keep on figuring this thing out… and failure after failure after failure, then boom, Hey, we gotta win. Awesome. Let’s build on that, you know? 

 

Mark Fox 11:19

Yeah, it for that’s true. On Elon’s documentary, right? I think he said he had budget for four motors, and they all blew up, or three. And then everyone thought they were out of a job. I think it was three. And then he goes, Hey, we got money for one more, but this is the last shot. And it worked. Right? 

 

Mark Divine 11:36

Right.

 

Mark Fox 11:36

So there could have not been me it was pretty close to happening. But no, it is. It’s very impressive to again, it’s hard to fathom what you’re looking at when they come back, just because you’re not used to seeing it right. 

 

Mark Divine 11:47

Right. Now, but you can see, you know, in that technology is the same technology they’ll use to land on planets someday. 

 

Mark Fox 11:55

Yeah. So they they’re a lot of them are using methane, liquid methaneoxygen, because you can harvest that potentially on Mars. And so you got a refueling system that can be refueled, or there’s a fuel capability there. So.

 

Mark Divine 12:10

Yeah. So you probably track this more than I do. But how close are we to getting to Mars? Elon, I remember kept saying like, 2026, and then, you know, gets pushed back a little bit. 2030. But what’s your thinking?

 

Mark Fox 12:23

I actually don’t know, because I’ve been hearing that forever, too. You know, in the long duration spaceflight is still a big issue. In fact, one device that we’ll talk about NASA has been using it for 50 years for bone density. Right? So and they use it on the space station for long, if you’re on for a long flight is there’s a pretty rapid decline in your bone density if you don’t use something like that. Right. So I don’t know, hopefully, it’s in my lifetime get to Mars and stuff. But it’s, it’s, it’s still a big challenge, just from the time to get there, you know, seven months, or whatever it is, and transportation. And then when you get there, there’s nothing there. Right? 

 

Mark Divine 12:59

There’s nothing there, you So you got to build, you got to basically fight for your survival. Once you get there.

 

Mark Fox 13:05

You got to build whatever you need, right and 3d printed, that type of thing. So..

 

Mark Divine 13:08

That’s intense. Now when we met down in, down in Texas at The Wizard Academy, Roy Williams place, you were teaching a class called Think like Da Vinci, which is all based on what you call the theory of TRIZ. Can you help us understand what is TRIZ? What is this theory of invention? And what where did it come from? And like, how did it help you as a thinker and a creator and inventor? 

 

Mark Fox 13:32

Okay. Yeah, the class is called DaVinci and the 40 answers, I wasn’t clever enough to come up with that Roy was he’s the better marketer, of course, right. But um, so TRIZ, it’s T-R-I-Z. It’s called TRIZ, you can pronounce it either way. It’s a Russian acronym that roughly translates to the theory of inventive problem solving.

 

Mark Divine 13:52

Okay.

 

Mark Fox 13:52

So a guy named Henrik Schuller, a Russian guy in a 50s. He was in a library looking for books and stuff on creativity, what’s the procedure, what methods you go through? He couldn’t find anything, right. So it’s like, there’s no books really on this. So he ended up getting a grant from the Russian Navy to go study it. And what he did is he, um, his team they looked at, at the time, I think it was 200,000 patents. So they looked at patents and started to look for patterns, right? And what they found was all these inventions fell into one of 40 categories. It’s called the 40 principles of TRIZ. And the idea or logic being and I don’t use the word principles, I use the word lenses because it’s more accurate for how you use it.

 

Mark Divine 14:35

Right.

 

Mark Fox 14:35

So you look at a problem or opportunity. Where do I need some fresh thinking? And I look at it through a specific lens. The logic being, if the history of invention through patents has been using one of these 40 categories, it’s giving you a great head start. And it’s making you think differently about it right. So…

 

Mark Divine 14:53

These categories are like ways of solving problems, right?

 

Mark Fox 14:56

Ways of solving problems, like number one is segmentation. So how do I break this thing into smaller pieces? Right? And I use that all the time in business everybody does, right is I can’t sell, you know, $1,000 device right out of the gate, what am I going to do, I gotta give something away for free or break into pieces. An example is when I first started doing video a long time ago, like 20 years ago, when it was hard, right to do video unlike today is I do like a one hour training course and nobody would watch it. But when I broke them into three to four minute sessions, people started to consume them. So I just took the same content and broke it into pieces. So that’s one called segmentation and other one is called, taking out. So you just take stuff out of it to make it simpler. One just popped in my head, the very first Apple iPod was had no instructions, right? It had a play, pause, fast forward, up down on volume, right.

 

Mark Divine 15:50

Right.

 

Mark Fox 15:50

t was just super simple. The opposite of that was a Blackberry. Right? When they came out, they had 50,000 buttons on him, right? So photographers use it all the time, for example, for it’s called frame line magnetism. So you take stuff out of the picture. So it’s more interesting. I tell people this is you can prove yourself pretty easy. You’re on vacation, take the picture, like you normally would then walk twice as close to the subject, if you can, without falling off a cliff. Take the picture again. And the second picture is almost always more interesting.

 

Mark Divine 16:19

Right, for sure. That’s interesting. 

 

Mark Fox 16:21

At the Academy, we have a screenplay writer there does a lot of stuff in Hollywood. And he’s like, he’d never heard of it. And it’s a good point. Because a lot of people that are naturally creative have never heard of TRIZ. But they use..

 

Mark Divine 16:32

They use it, yeah. 

 

Mark Fox 16:33

They use it. unconsciously. They didn’t know they did. And he said, so like on screenplays, they’ll take the first five pages and throw them away, because the guy that wrote is trying to set up the stage, too close, right? 

 

Mark Divine 16:44

Right.

 

Mark Fox 16:44

He’s trying to give too much detail. So he took all the interest out of it.

 

Mark Divine 16:46

Interesting. 

 

Mark Fox 16:47

So you’ll see that in commercials and stuff all the time. One last one is just called, other way around, and you just do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. 

 

Mark Divine 16:55

Right, inverse, yeah. 

 

Mark Fox 16:57

You do the inverse of it. So So Kary Mullis has been to The Wizard Academy, he won the Nobel Prize for PCR polymerase chain reaction, which every hospital in the world has a machine now. But basically, you were trying to extract a little piece of DNA, right? A section of DNA, which is super hard to do, because it’s so small. So his logic was, instead of trying to get the needle out of a haystack, make the needle reproduce itself. So there’s as many needles as there is hay. That was his logic. So he’s not a biologist. He’s a chemist, but that’s where PCR came from, is just now when that was explained to him, he’s like, yeah, I’ve never heard of TRIZ in my life. But that’s always what I’ve done. I do the opposite of what the rest of the industry is doing. And it leads me to some great ideas. 

 

Mark Divine 17:37

Yeah, now I can see the ideas show up in other forms, like I was thinking, the idea of subtracting or even adding or removing is also the foundation for Blue Ocean Strategy. 

 

Mark Fox 17:48

Right. Right. 

 

Mark Divine 17:48

Right. And so they’re either they’re drawing from TRIZs, or they just kind of like stumbled upon, you know, because it makes it’s just a lot of stuff that a lot of this is common sense. But TRIZ can help you think further and deeper, because some of them aren’t common sense. Like if you’re, if you’re dealing with a mechanical problem, look at it from a fluidic, you know…

 

Mark Fox 18:04

Right.

 

Mark Divine 18:04

Engineering stance.

 

Mark Fox 18:05

Right.

 

Mark Divine 18:05

And try to solve it from a different dimension. 

 

Mark Fox 18:07

Exactly. 

 

Mark Divine 18:08

That’s pretty cool. Yeah.

 

Mark Fox 18:10

There’s actually one of the 40 lenses is called exactly that, another dimension. That’s like, how do you think about it from a completely different dimension, you can high speed cameras, you can slow stuff down, if you have like a problem in manufacturing, you can’t really see why it’s making bad parts, you can do that. There’s a whole bunch of dimensional change stuff that you use in cinematography in Hollywood a lot. And again, most people have not been trained formally on TRIZ. They just, if they’re creative, they’re using one or two lenses naturally, which I think DaVinci used probably three of them, right but but it’s when you’re stuck or not even stuck. If you need to brainstorm for an hour, just pick two or three lenses spend 20 minutes on each one and just you know, what are some new fresh ideas looking at it this way? Like segmentation are the ones we just covered, taking it apart, taking you out, do it the other way around. Do it backwards. You said vibration. One of them is called mechanical vibration. Right? How do you just shake it or do something?

 

Mark Divine 19:03

Shake it..

 

Mark Fox 19:05  

Quick story, there’s like, the wings on my airplane. I sold it, the concept to my wife because the video had a nice marketing with a 75 year old couple that was nice music in the background. And they take the wings off and put it on a trailer and stick in the garage. 

 

Mark Divine 19:18

Yeah.

 

Mark Fox 19:18

I’m like, okay, so I can remove the wings. No, it these wings are in its blood, a lot of guys and you know, several beers to get these wings off.

 

Mark Divine 19:27

Right. Not surprising.

 

Mark Fox 19:29  

And I figured out, I’m the only guy, I can’t teach it to anyone else, but I finally figured out how to hold the wingtip Mark and shake it that it’s like that vibration, just the right vibration then you can get the pins out. 

 

Mark Divine 19:42

Interesting

 

Mark Fox 19:42

Because it’s just mechanical. It’s kind of like shaking a you know a jar toothpicks, right? You do it just right. And they’re all settle and they were rearranged. So yeah, mechanical vibration is a huge one that used a lot. So…

 

Mark Divine 19:53

That’s fascinating. When you were at Morton Thiokol were they using these these principles to solve problems?

 

Mark Fox 20:00  

No, not a lot. I acc.., I’ve taught it at every NASA center, there is the United States. So I was kind of pushing it. I taught it a lot with my organization, but in general now is kind of what’s this weird stuff, right? You know, but here’s what I love is when somebody is in a room, they got that look on their face like, This is dumb. Fox, there’s no way you make us do this. This is the dumbest thing. And then 20 minutes into they pound their hand the table and goes, That’s awesome idea. Yeah. Right. So it worked. They got to thinking about a different. So I did that one time, you remember when Six Sigma and TQM. And all those buzzwords are out there, right. So I was presenting to I’ll just say the company, it was General Motors, right? It’s like, I have this creative thinking to involve I’m explaining it and the VP cuts me off. He goes, Mark, I don’t want my guys making damn paper airplanes. Like, Oh, okay. Well, I have another course called CIG. It’s called cigs systematic idea generation, blah, blah. And I just started using all the buzzwords. And he goes, he slammed his hand the table goes, Why do you waste my time? Mark? That’s exactly what we need. Not that crap you’re talking about earlier. We know what the difference is. Those are brown slides instead of blue slides, exact same material. I was like, okay, but I had to change the viewpoint, which is one of the lenses a change of viewpoint, so he could hear it in his language. 

 

Mark Divine 21:14

Right. 

 

Mark Fox 21:14

So that’s how I got the booking with those guys. But yeah, he hated the first approach, but I just changed the angle on it. Right? 

 

Mark Divine 21:20

That’s fascinating. I thought it was really fascinating that Altshuller or the guy who founded you know, TRIZ, or discovered or came up with a theory.

 

Mark Fox 21:27

Genrikh Altshuller. 

 

Mark Divine 21:28

Altshuller. Yeah, he was actually thrown in the Gulag by Stalin. 

 

Mark Fox 21:33

He was.

 

Mark Divine 21:34

Right, because they thought, you know, Stalins, like, oh my God, you’re a spy. Right? You’re whatever you’re doing, right. This is, of course, everyone smart was a threat to Stalin. 

 

Mark Fox 21:42

Became a threat to Stalin, and basically told him he was doing it wrong. What I understand from history is some of the processes and stuff that they were doing in engineering development. He’s like, you’re doing it wrong. You need to be you and using what I discovered these TRIZ lenses, and he threw him in jail for it. Said, I’ll teach you. Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 21:58

Sounds like the United States today. 

 

Mark Fox 22:00

Close, right. In some cases, yeah.

 

Mark Divine 22:06  

Oh, my goodness. So when you left rocket science, where did your journey take you?

 

Mark Fox 22:12

I went from rocket science to, I wanted to get out of the aerospace. That part of the I went to Parker Hannifin, which I thought would be a lot different. We made flight hydraulic actuators for Boeing aircraft. And it was still kind of like, the government. So I was there for a while. Then I went to IMega, if you’re old enough to remember is..

 

Mark Divine 22:31

I remember that, yeah. Totally.

 

Mark Fox 22:33

Yeah, that’s one of those. If you have a product that nobody in the world has, and everyone needs it, you can have monkeys running the company and still make money. Literally, they, I think Mark, they made something like 100,000 Zip drives without a drawing. They just kept modifying the mold tooling in the garage and stuff, right? So they, they grew from, you know, a few million dollars a year to, to 1.4 billion or something like, and so they just had no systems are anything in place. So it’s like, they hire me. And they go, you’re in charge of the internet, which hadn’t even started yet. This is like 1998, right? That in charge of the call center and customer service, I go, what’s a call center? I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know like, it’s where people call in, they have problem with the products and stuff was like, so our phone bill, and when I got there was $33 million a year.

 

Mark Divine 23:22

Holy schmoly.

 

Mark Fox 23:23

33 million a year is like, so what are people calling for? And then I got all this opinions. Right? So then I had to get went to the engineering logic, because where’s your Pareto charts? I mean, what’s the 80/20 rule? What are they? What’s the top 10 reasons? Nobody had any data? 

 

Mark Divine 23:38

Right.

 

Mark Fox 23:39

They were all just their opinions. So..

 

Mark Divine 23:40

It’s hard to collect data back then, by the way, not anything like that is today? 

 

Mark Fox 23:44

No, it’s a lot harder. Yeah, you had pencil and little chalk marks and that kind of stuff. But you could still do it. And it wasn’t that hard is what ended up being like the number one reason people called, and I explained this to the chairman, the board is like, there’s no way you don’t understand this. It’s got two cords in there used to have a cord it was a power cord, and one that had to go parallel printer cord had to go to the printer, which is how the logic used. But the second core was in the bottom of the box with a separator on it, right? So people think I it’s got a chord I plugged it in should work. 

 

Mark Divine 24:14

Right.

 

Mark Fox 24:14

Well, it doesn’t. It’s got to have the communication cord. So I just simply put a hand on there that just and this is where I was using TRIZ back then I just put a hand in a box a stop. This has two cords. Right? I think that probably saved $5 million in phone calls. Right.

It was super simple stuff like that was like this is not that hard, right? 

 

Mark Divine 24:33

Right.

 

Mark Fox 24:34

Wait a minute, don’t do that. Plug this in. Don’t go here. I mean, we had one time when all a fraud was going on and people were just, you know, use stolen credit cards and buying zip drives or whatever. And it happened mostly in New York and Miami, right? So we get in a meeting we got all these IT guys telling me all the money they need to go build a new system to protect all this stuff. And I go, No, I go, how often do we ship more than one unit to a person?

So, he goes, sometimes we ship to once a month. It’s always individual. Okay. So if anyone orders more than three, pick up the phone and call them as if there’s a real person there. Don’t ship the 30 items they ordered. 

 

Mark Divine 25:12

Right.

 

Mark Fox 25:12

Okay. All right. That solved that, right? 

 

Mark Divine 25:14

No Kidding.

 

Mark Fox 25:15

So it’s using some of these simple TRIZ solutions like, yeah, we don’t need a elaborate system. 

 

Mark Divine 25:20

You mentioned earlier that PEMF, which I don’t know what it means, but I know that we’re talking about electrical stimulation that is used by NASA. So tell me more about PEMF because I know that you’re, you’re involved in that nowadays. 

 

Mark Fox 25:34

Yeah. PEMF stands for pulsed electro-magnetic field. So it’s what it sounds like: it’s an electromagnetic field that pulses. Now, the earth, the earth is a 24/7, since the beginning of time, as far as we know, is a PMF machine. 

 

Mark Divine 25:50

Right.

 

Mark Fox 25:50

It puts out seven point, I’m gonna get it wrong, seven point three one hertz, it has like three main bands, a 7.83 14.1, and 20.3. 40 to 50. microteslas is what everyone on the planet Earth is experiencing all the time. So there’s actually studies and stuff that show you need to be barefoot once in a while to be grounded to the earth for good health.

 

Mark Divine 26:10

Right. 

 

Mark Fox 26:10

Right. And there’s some studies on African tribes that are barefoot all the time that don’t get diseases, right. So there’s, so that’s what it is. It’s PEMF. It’s a natural thing that exists on the planet Earth. But as far as therapeutic stuff, so the frequencies have been around since the time of Tesla. I mean, it’s not, it’s not new, Nikola Tesla back in the 1900s. Right, 1890’s-1900’s and stuff, he was doing a lot of high voltage stuff. But what’s weird is if you think about it, in the medical world, think about this way as you’ve got mechanical, right? Cutting people stitching their bones casts, right. I’ve got chemical drugs. But in the western medicine, we ignore the electrical part. 

 

Mark Divine 26:52

Yeah. And that’s what you’re getting at with acupuncture. And..

 

Mark Fox 26:56

Exactly. 

 

Mark Divine 26:57

Acupressure and those types of things. 

 

Mark Fox 26:58

Yeah, and a lot of the meridians and stuff and acupuncture are similar to this. But what happened, unfortunately, like 1934, there’s a thing called the Flexner Report that came out that basically said, if you’re doing any electrical stimulation research, your university funding is going to get pulled and you’re gonna lose your medical license. 

 

Mark Divine 27:19

Why, why? What was their rationale?

 

Mark Fox 27:22

Carnegie and some of those guys that were behind just didn’t believe in it. Right. And they were the ones funding stuff. So Rockefeller and those guys were like, nope, we don’t believe in this voodoo. And maybe they didn’t like the Tesla type electric. I don’t know all the stuff behind that. But I know that’s what happened is they just killed it. 

 

Mark Divine 27:37

Maybe if people got too healthy, then we wouldn’t be able to sell them drugs.

 

Mark Fox 27:41

That could be that too, which is, which is still part of the problem with it today is why it doesn’t get a lot of funding and research. Because most people don’t know this, that 75% of the FDA budget is funded by Pharma. 

 

Mark Divine 27:55

That’s right. That’s it. 

 

Mark Fox 27:57

It’s insane. Crazy. So what happened was, so there’s a guy named Van Gelder found these frequencies are all very low. And to distinguish it from electrical current point of view, a 10s unit is milliamps. This is micro amps. So it’s 1000 times less energy than a 10s unit. And I’m not putting wires on you. I’m just using the magnetic field. My theory is and the data shows it’s valid. It’s the frequencies I don’t care how you deliver it, it can be with electrical wire can be a magnetic field, it can be light, it can be this chair, vibrating, right, so it’s just getting the frequency energy. So what it is, is has, there’s protocols that about 8000 practitioners use, they’ve been doing it for 30 years, super high success rate with it. The problem? My opinion is it’s being held kind of hostage in a clinical environment with expensive machines. 

 

Mark Divine 28:49

Yeah. Totally.

 

Mark Fox 28:49

So my goal was to make a pocket PMF device, because the ones one of the most common ones out there is called a beamer mat. It’s $5,000. And it’s a mat.

 

Mark Divine 28:58

I’ve heard of that, yeah. Usually sold as a grounding device, right? 

 

Mark Fox 29:02

Yeah, it’s a grounding device for for pain and therapy and a lot of those things, but it’s, you don’t need the whole mat because the frequencies resonate with the water in your body. So if you picture throwing a pebble in a pond or energies there, but it spreads out through the water your body.

 

Mark Divine 29:17

Right.

 

Mark Fox 29:18

We kind of know that because you can put this in your pocket, and it’ll help a broken foot. Right, and it’s not near your foot. And, and the number one thing I’ve been concentrating on is PTSD, anxiety, back pain. But PTSD is where I have the most clinical data on it. 

 

Mark Divine 29:31

Right, right.

 

Mark Fox 29:32

But it’s so my goal was just to build an affordable pocket one that fits in your pocket, and that’s, that’s the device I have today. 

 

Mark Divine 29:40

That’s cool. So tell us about the research for PTSD. And, and I wonder also, since you know, we have a foundation that’s supporting Vets, if we could, you know, get some of these things to test with them?

 

Mark Fox 29:52

Absolutely. So what I for what I’ve done for PTSD is, is at home clinical trials, so when they start the study, they they’re doing the PLC five, it’s the same test that the Veterans Administration uses. It’s 20 questions. It’s simple. 0-4. So it’s self reported. Obviously, if you scored for everything, you’d have an 80. Right.

 

Mark Divine 30:12

Right.

 

Mark Fox 30:12

So the VA Veterans Administration has said, If you score above 31 to 33, you probably have PTSD. Any intervention, if it’s my device, singing, eye movement, a dog, puppy, whatever, if it moves your score more than 11 points, then it’s clinically and statistically significant.

 

Mark Divine 30:31

Right.

 

Mark Fox 30:31

So the good news that I have is, so what they’re doing is they they take this survey, they use it three to four times a week for a month, and then they take the test again, okay, so we’re just comparing before and after scores. So 92% 93%, now, see a reduction in the scores. And two out of three, see a reduction that that is statistically clinically significant, meaning more than 11 points. That’s the good news, Mark. The bad news. And it’s this is a weird is an interesting psychology experiment. The bad news is half the people tell me, I don’t think it helped me. I’ll go, I’ll go well, you went from a 70 to a 15. And right, so I, I keep building these report cards to show them and people are shocked. 

 

Mark Divine 31:15

It’s because they don’t think they’re doing anything. You take out their their autonomy. And they think…Well, this is just passive, this thing is just sitting around my neck, I’m not doing anything, it’s something else that I that I must have done led to that decrease, or that decline.

 

Mark Fox 31:27

There’s that, and then that part of it with the PTSD is it’s programmed to try and erase as a strong word, but diminish those bad thoughts, right? So I’ve talked to doctors and chiropractors stuff about it. And a friend of mine, in fact, yesterday I was talking to, he’s like, I have to do that I have to video people when they come in and show him the range of motion because 30 days later they go, I can always do that. 

 

Mark Divine 31:48

Yeah.

 

Mark Fox 31:49

That didn’t fix that. And he goes, no, three weeks ago, you couldn’t move your elbow at all right? And then doctors told me the same thing with medication is the medication people tell you? I don’t think it helped me. I was like, Well, okay, it did. And your whole family sees a difference. Right?

 

Mark Divine 32:02

Right.

 

Mark Fox 32:03

So it’s a weird psychology experiment with that, but it’s, um, it’s really helped with, with PTSD and, and sleep and anxiety and back pain and stuff, I think. But it’s, that’s the study, I’ve been doing it to keep the doctors…Doctors, the only people I know in the science world that do statistics backwards. 

 

Mark Divine 32:19

Right.

 

Mark Fox 32:19

So they use things called P factors. They say, 

 

Mark Divine 32:21

I know what a P-factor is. 

 

Mark Fox 32:23

Okay, a point 05. If it’s lower than point 05, which in real person terms mean, there’s only a 5% chance that the results were due to chance. 

 

Mark Divine 32:32

Right.

 

Mark Fox 32:32

And I might be P-factors like 0007. On my studies.

 

Mark Divine 32:35

Ok, so highly statistically relevant. 

 

Mark Fox 32:38

It is.

 

Mark Divine 32:39

What how do they determine like, regarding like, post traumatic stress, like, how do we know what frequency is going to heal it? And what is it actually doing? Is that jiggling your brain cells differently? Like what’s going on here? 

 

Mark Divine 32:51

That’s a super good question. But so PTSD is not a brain thing. It’s a full body ailment. So it’s in your organs, it’s in your brain, every part of your brain, it’s in your skin. It’s in heart, liver, everything. So there’s a book out there called The Body Keeps the Score, which is one of the more popular books out there. So what it’s doing is it’s targeting, in general, it goes to frequency pairs, frequency, A and B. So frequency A is what’s wrong. B is where is it? So it might be inflammation in the medulla, it might be inflammation in the elbow or the liver. Right. So it’s, it’s a hard question, because and this is argument I get in with doctors. Right, is what it’s doing that we know is we know it’s recharging the cells, you’re so there’s a lot of research that shows if the electrical charge in your cell gets to it’s actually negative, but if it gets too low, that’s when you get cancer and you get sick. So there’s studies that show it recharges your cells batteries, okay? So that’s in layman’s term, recharged your cell’s battery so that your body can fix itself.

 

Mark Divine  33:55  

The cell’s batteries being the mitochondria?

 

Mark Fox 33:57

Yes, yes. Right. So it’s doing that. And the frequencies are low enough that they travel through the interstitial fluid. They actually don’t go through the membrane. Right? They go, they go through the term, I kind of think of as like massaging the cell, because it’s not going through it. It’s going around, but a ton of metabolic processes happen at the cell membrane.

 

Mark Divine 34:18

Right.

 

Mark Fox 34:19

Not just on the inside of it, right? It will things attached to it. So that’s what we think it is. We know ATP, and I’ll say it wrong. That gets adenosine triphosphate. It’s the main fuel for your cells. That’s what they eat. Their studies that show it increases it up to 500%.

 

Mark Divine  34:36  

Wow. 

 

Mark Fox 34:36

How it does that exactly…So then, of course, I have some studies going on with some doctors right now in the sleep center and stuff and they beat me up about mechanism action. It’s like, prove to me how it’s actually working and like and this is where I usually make them angry. I go, you don’t know how aspirin works.

Aspirin has been around for 3000 years. You don’t know how any drug in the world works. You have theories, but you haven’t proven it. And they go out we know exactly what it’s doing. I go, 

Okay, so here’s a, an it’s not a medical example. But it’s the same thought process Mark, how do you heat a slice of pizza in a microwave oven? How does it work? 

 

Mark Divine 35:09

That’s good. You put the thing in and push the button on.

 

Mark Fox 35:11

You push a button on, and you people don’t tell you the microwave radiation. The theory is it’s the rotational frequency of a water molecule. So the water molecule is spinning and causing friction to heat up the pizza. Nobody on the planet earth has ever photograph or video a spinning water molecule. Okay. So it may or may not work that way. So I’m not going to live long enough to get the mechanism action perfect. Here’s what I tell people is relief before reason. 

 

Mark Divine 35:37

Yeah.

 

Mark Fox 35:37

Okay. My number one goal Mark, and all of this research has been number one don’t hurt anybody. Okay, so I’ve done a ton to make sure the energy levels I’m using. Number two is I don’t want to sell voodoo. Right. I’m a scientist. I’m skeptical. I don’t believe this stuff. Right. So that’s why I’ve been researching it for 20 years. I’m running my own tests. I run it on me, right, is trying to prove that it works with real statistical data. It’s Dude, it is terrible. How many Facebook haters there are. I get, I get a message from Facebook everyday about somebody wants to like go to hell, you should die. You’re an evil person. No, it’s horrible. Every every day. Every day is like, can’t you find something else to do? Right? And so there’s some negative people out there, like, can’t possibly work, you know? Well, okay, try it. If it doesn’t, it’s not gonna work for everyone. Now, we’ll say this. So far, 100% of the time when people told me it didn’t work. I go, Alright, one or two things. You didn’t use it. You use it. Once you put it on the shelf. You can use it three, four times a week or you’re not hydrated. 

 

Mark Divine 36:35

Right.

 

Mark Fox 36:37

Here’s that somebody told me Mark last week? Well, I’m always hydrated. I go, how much water? Do you drink a day? He goes, I don’t drink water. I go, why you hydrated? He goes, I had a protein drink last week. But somebody told me. That’s what somebody told me. I had a protein drink last week. I’m like, and then it’s interesting, because when you get to elderly people with arthritis and the Alzheimer’s, they are…

 

Mark Divine 36:57

Everyone’s chronic, chronically dehydrated, and chronically um hyper-aroused. And chronically underslept. 

 

Mark Fox 37:04

Yeah. And the hydration thing to older people. They’re fantastic liars. They tell you, Oh, here’s how much water I drink. And I think I’m not drinking any. 

 

Mark Divine 37:10

Yeah.

 

Mark Fox 37:11

They’re drinking a cup of coffee or something or two a day, but they’re not drinking water. So.. 

 

Mark Divine 37:15

That’s a good point.

 

Mark Fox 37:16

Everyone. So most people go away, and then I’ll follow up and go. So did you drink water and try it? Yeah, now it’s working. I feel a lot better. Okay. 

 

Mark Divine 37:23

I have a question. So if there’s like just an optimal frequency, or a frequency for optimal health, why do we need different frequencies for like post traumatic stress or bone healing or sleep? 

 

Mark Fox 37:36

There’s an argument out there from some of the people in this field is I don’t need specific targeted frequencies, I just need PEMF in general, which would be some of the earth ones like the grounding the 7.2. The other a lot of people in this field with resonance frequency therapy, targeted stuff. It’s shown that, we do believe it’s specific for whatever reason, because it ends up being a diagnostic tool Mark, somebody will come in, they’ll go, I have this and you run the frequencies and it doesn’t help them, then you go, that’s the wrong diagnosis. There’s something else, right, and then you start playing with certain things to find frequency that works. 

 

Mark Divine 38:14

Is it possible then that the, that like, the optimal frequency for human health is an aggregate of different frequencies of all your different organs? And, you know..?

 

Mark Fox  38:25  

Most likely it is. But to target something to get it back in correction, look at it this way is, This notebook has a frequency that’s different than this pen, right? They both exist at a different frequency. Everything has its own natural frequency. So when you’re targeting something like heart health, or your liver or your medulla, your brain, or tendinitis, the frequency needs to target that area. Now, the research, how do you know 81hz your elbow. Nobody knows. guys did that back in the 40s or 50s, that research got lost and then you just built on it. So the PTSD protocol is, so it’s going through pairs and changing every two to four minutes. It’s the most complex protocol I have, like I said, because it’s a full body. I think there’s 72 pairs. So it’s going through 72 different pairs going through your entire body because it’s a full body ailment. But then I have people that just will run it for something and aiming at one thing, but it made them change something else. I had a lady last week. I have some debilitating itching on my arms that pops up every three days or so I have to stop what I’m doing. No doctor knows what it is. There’s no name for it. Will your device do anything? I don’t know. So I go try allergy and general inflammation. And she called me up two weeks, two weeks after that call and she goes, I’ve not had an incident since then, what is this magic? I’m like, I don’t know. I just guessed it inflammation and allergy. Right, you know, and there’s one protocol on their Mark called Brain Balance. It’s called concussion, but I don’t like that because it’s to focus on words. I just call brain balancing.

All the doctors and stuff, they use it at the end of the protocols when they’re treating somebody at a clinic, they just run that one for the hell of it because it does a lot of magic. And they’re not sure why. 

 

Mark Divine 40:08

Interesting. Very cool. Well, I want to follow up and see if I can get some of these for The Courage Foundation. 

 

Mark Fox 40:16

Yeah, absolutely. 

 

Mark Divine 40:17

And we’re not talking about hundreds. I mean, maybe we just have small cohorts go through a year long healing process.

 

Mark Fox 40:24

No problem at all. 

 

Mark Divine 40:25

That would be cool. And that’s cool work. So what’s next for you? Are you working on any more books? Or like, what’s what’s like, got your TRIZ mind spun up? 

 

Mark Fox 40:35

Actually, it’s this. And my wife asked me last year, because how many companies have you started in the last 10 years? I’m like, I don’t know. We’ll go count them. So it was like 12. Okay, so I gotta concentrate on this vibe, this device and trying to get it out there and..

 

Mark Divine 40:51

Or Yeah, or else your wife will say bye, bye, if you start number 14.

 

Mark Fox  40:57

But she’s the one with a real job. So she’s the one paying for it. Right. But it’s, here’s what I would like to do with it. Like I said earlier, frequencies can be delivered with light vibration, or a number of different things. And MIT, they discovered 40 hertz light reverses Alzheimer’s by accident. So I called them up and I go. Okay, it’s 40 hertz, but you’re missing a whole lot of other stuff. And I’ll give it to you for free. They said Call us when you sell 150,000 units. Like, okay, I was trying to help you. But here’s my end goal. So like these smart lights, right? I have right here is Philips smart lights. 

I won’t say your name. A-L-E-X-A over there, because you’ll start talking. But let’s say your name is June. Okay. Here’s my goal. I want to go, Hey, June, run Alzheimer’s in the kitchen.

 

Mark Divine 41:42

No kidding.

 

Mark Fox 41:43

Right. So you have all these lights installed. So I already have the app that I built for that to work Mark. The problem is some genius engineer at Philips decided when he turns a light switch on, he doesn’t want this light to just come on. So it’s delayed, like 50 milliseconds or 100 milliseconds. So I can’t flicker it at 900 Hertz. If I could find an engineer to help me get around that problem. I have smart lights here smart lights here. I can take existing lights, right? And turn them into a medical device or a therapy device. So with an app, you could just do it on an iPhone, or you programming into June over here, right? They just say run that protocol. And then people don’t even know they’re getting the therapy, which would be awesome. But my wife says focus on that one. Focus on the one you got. So…

 

Mark Divine 42:30

That’s a fascinating vision, though that our homes can be our kind of like rejuvenation machines. 

 

Mark Fox 42:36

I made this three years ago. There’s the desk light.

 

Mark Divine 42:40

Right.

 

Mark Fox 42:41

And it just flickers the frequencies this one works, but I have to hide it. You saw it was hidden. She doesn’t want me working on that anymore. Like, go make this one work first, right. 

 

Mark Divine 42:50

One thing at a time Mark. 

 

Mark Fox 42:52

One thing at a time, yeah. So that’s, that’s really my goal with and the main goal, as you know, as well as anybody is to 44 suicides a day, right? 

 

Mark Divine 43:01

Yeah. 

 

Mark Fox 43:02

15 first responders, 5 medical workers, and 2 active duty. So there’s 44 If I can change one a week, then this is all worth it. So that’s really my goal. I’m not making any money off this yet. Mark, right. I’m spending money. But..

 

Mark DIvine 43:14

Right.

 

Mark Fox 43:15

But some of the pleasure I get and if this doesn’t put goosebumps on your arm, you’re not human. Okay, a 17 year girl at The Wizard Academy. Okay, I won’t say her name. But she goes, Mark, I’ve never had a date in my life. Because I have Tourette’s. She goes no guy is gonna go out with me. She goes I ran brain balancing my Tourette’s disappeared. I have a date Saturday night. 

 

Mark Divine 43:34

Oh, wow. 

 

Mark Fox 43:35

If that didn’t make you cry…Like, wow. Okay. So that I know of, I’ve had a couple of Vets call me and tell me they were at the end of the rope suicidal and that this really helped them. I have a very good friend in Utah was out there with my balloon last summer. He has a 15 year old boy that was suicidal. He ran anxiety one night, and then he slept with it every night for weeks. He goes, I feel way better.

 

Mark Divine  43:58  

That’s awesome

 

Mark Fox 43:58

Not talking about suicide anymore. So that alone is like the most satisfying thing and doing that. 

 

Mark Divine 44:03

Yeah, that’s your Why. That’s your Why, yeah.

 

Mark Fox 44:05

That’s my Why, yes, exactly. 

 

Mark Divine 44:07

Awesome. Well, Mark, do you have a website or social media? Where can people learn more about your work? 

 

Mark Fox 44:13

I do. It’s resona: r e s o n a dot health ,not.com But resona, like resonance. But we set up a page for for your listeners resona dot health, forward slash divine and they can go on there and get $100 is $399 but we give them $150 off if they want to try it. If it doesn’t work for him send it back again with full refund. I don’t want anyone to have when these devices if it doesn’t work for him. I don’t any more Facebook haters, right if it doesn’t work for you send it back or give me your money. 

 

Mark Divine 44:42

Okay. So resona dot healthforward slash divine. Did you spell it? D-I-V-I-N-E?

 

Mark Fox 44:47

I did. Yes.

 

Mark Divine 44:48

Ok, good. Because, a lot of people get that wrong. Awesome. All right, Mark, thanks so much. Appreciate you. 

 

Mark Fox 44:52

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much.

 

Mark Divine 44:55  

Fascinating episode with Mark Fox. Thanks so much for joining me appreciate it. Really interesting stuff about the space shuttle and about TRIZ the theory of invention. Loved it and super useful. Thanks so much for joining me. Shownotes are up on my website and Mark Divine.com. Now that YouTube is up on my YouTube channel, you can find me on Twitter at Mark Divine and Instagram and Facebook @ Real Mark Divine. My newsletter, Divine Inspiration comes out every Tuesday, you haven’t gotten that. And you might find it interesting. I have the show notes from the podcast, I’ve got my blog, I’ve got other interesting things that come across my desk, including a weekly practice and the book I’m reading for the week. If you haven’t read it or reviewed the podcast, it’s very helpful for others to read reviews and for us to keep it at the top of the ranks. So wherever you listen, please consider rating or reviewing our show, thanks to my incredible team, Jason Sanderson and Geoff Haskell and Catherine Divine, who help produce this podcast and bring incredible guests like Mark to you every single week. Thanks so much for being part of the solution in the world to be to develop a more positive culture, more abundant future and to move away from the division and separation and violence. We have to do it one person at a time, and we can and we will, so thanks for doing your part. Share the word till next time. This is Divine out.

 

Transcribed by Catherine https://otter.ai