Citation Needed - DARPA

Episode Date: December 5, 2018

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency was created in February 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957. By collaborating with academic, industry, and government partners, DARPA formulates and executes research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, often beyond immediate U.S. military requirements.[3]   Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

It just feels, you know, meandery, like, what are they doing? Yeah, but it's still fun. Come on, the Janet fight, I mean, really? The Janet fight was great. The Janet here. Absolutely not. Well, then you think of something. Hey, guys, what's all the fuss about?

Eli, that's you. You tell him your stupid idea. Okay, okay. So you guys know how this week's episode is about DARPA? Yeah. Yeah. So it got me thinking about like invention, right? And that's what we need to do, but with podcasts.

Oh, we invent podcasts. Yes, smart. I love it. No, nope, Tom, Tom, already invented, we have one. That's what this is. Are you sure about that one? British sure, British sure. Right now. But like, I wear Tom's thinking like, we reinvent podcasts. Are we figure out the next big thing? Like, like the way Dan Carland did with

history or did with sexually harassing their employees? I am so bleeping that out. Holy shit. That's probably for the best. They're big show. Okay. I'm thinking about it some more. I'm game. So what if we did the first ever podcast that people pay for it, but it just never comes out. We don't make it. Hey, look everyone, he's had an idea, that involves him not doing anything more. I'm very busy, this would make money for small amount of money.

It doesn't, guys, serial season two already did that. Oh, they did. And Eli's blog did that too. That's true. If you guys remember my... Not in front of DARPA. So, no, here's my idea, okay? It's personalized podcasts.

Non-sensual. Personalized podcasts. Yeah, yeah, like you take a normal show, but then you insert the name of your listeners for them to subscribe to that RSS feed. So it's not just a podcast, it's a podcast that's like for you as an individual. Eli, that would take hundreds and hundreds of hours.

Well, I mean, he could do it. What? No, absolutely not. You know, actually, this might work. This could just work. Yeah. Let's give it a try and by all means, I think people will like it. A good idea, Eli.

Vito, Vito. Yeah. One vote. Damn it. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm no illusions and I'll be centrally processing this episode, but I can't do it alone. So first up, two human equivalents of bloatware,

Cecil, and heat. Whenever I eat carbs, I have to have at least one gigabyte. So, this is one year, right? Yeah, for me, over the last five years, my file system went from fat 32 to obese 37. It's not great. It's not great. It's not great. And of course, also joining us tonight are two men who really put the random acts back

in random access memory, Tom and Eli. Wait, I'm sorry. So you guys are telling me no matter how much money we raised during vulgarity for charity, none of it undoes one little crime. None of it. I feel like I misunderstood like when you need to back up. So I just, I ate a lot of cheese. I was missing a lot of stuff. Tom, that's, that's true. I hurt so much. It does. No, it, it, it does. All right. So before we get started, I wanted to take a second to thank our patrons without our patrons. We'd be poor and Eli wouldn't hang out with us. But it's good that you give us money anyway. If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks,

be sure to stick around to the end of the show and with that out of the way, tell us Eli, what person-placed thing concept phenomenon or event? What would be talking about today? We'll be talking about DARPA, which I'm pretty sure isn't cool to say anymore. I think you got a... It's dire word.

Yeah. And Tom, you were assigned to read an article. isn't cool to say anymore. I think you got a. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's It's Recently nothing Cecil nothing at all Okay, but that okay, I'm just gonna go ahead and do what I always do and pretend that I can't hear you when you criticize me No, all right. Well then I'll have my work cut out for me as host tell us Tom DARPA is the defense advanced research projects agency DARPA is an agency of the Department of Defense and DARPA is an agency of the Department of Defense and, ostensibly, they're the research arm for that defense department. And while that's true, they're basically a cabal of mad scientists with crazy defense money spending and virtually no one telling you, that's a bad idea. You're going to kill us all.

So the Avengers, but, but actually with less oversight, the Avengers with less oversight. Team Ironman, thank you, Heath. They should make him a tool of the UN bullshit. All right. So, where does DARPA come from, Tom? I was created in 1958 by President Eisenhower, known originally just as ARPA. The agency was created as a response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. That launch was the beginning of a propaganda war, and the US was quickly losing. We were losing the propaganda war with Russia. Okay. All right.

Yeah. It's got a friend to sit that. The response, our response was to create an organization that could collaborate amongst academic industry and government partners and their mission. And they did choose to accept it. It's to go beyond just developing the next giant bomb to develop projects that push the limits in science and technology. Vegan cheese that doesn't taste like wet salt. Uh, no, not vegan cheese that doesn't taste like wet salt. Vegan cheese?

Uh, just the cheese? Now, as it is now. All right. And unlike other defense agencies whose products have to have an immediate and practical value DARPA's mission is to research products that reach beyond immediate military use Which means projects must have been routinely shot down for being useful Right Obviously we use a bigger missile with it. What am I gonna cure this missiles cancer Frank get the fuck are you talking about? Obviously we can use a bigger missile with the, what am I gonna cue in this missile's cancer, Frank?

Get the fuck out of my office. So, fire him. To that end, they hired their first director, Roy Johnson in 1958. And Roy left his comically high paying job at GE for pennies on the dollar working for ARPA. And he hired his first assistant, Herbert York, and together they pursued projects related to space technologies with vigor. And then almost immediately NASA was created, they lost all their funding for their space

projects and Johnson Quicks. So not a great start. And then blast off. This is general Eisenhower in the White House at this point. And he must have been like, all right, DARPA, let me see what you got. And he's expecting like, you know, a monster truck rally where we jump a motorcycle over Moscow

and then squish Moscow with the world's biggest tanks. And these nerves were like, so when he lips is a geometric boo, punch, wedgie, you're fucking fired. All right, well, ARPA was rebranded punch wedgie, you're fucking fired. I will. Arpa was rebranded and their mission was to do, quote, high risk, high gain far out, and quote, basic research. Far out basic is a weird phrase. I love for that to not be free words next to each other in enormous budget government

projects. We'll just just follow that up with food or welfare and they don't know problem actually. A DARPA's early work centered around ballistic missile defense, nuclear test detection, and issues revolving around national security. A DARPA also began researching computer processing, behavioral science and material science. DARPA invented GPS, which is originally called transit. They studied directed energy, radar, infrared sensing, X-raying, gamma ray detection, and most terribly of all, they invented the internet, though at first they just called it ARPA net. Just lost the British audience.

So at some point, a really talented computer scientist was like, all right, what's my next big project, like fucking lasers and satellites and stuff. And his boss was like, I'm tired of coming on the same penthouse every day. Fix that. Gamma Ray detection, little known fact, Gamma Ray was just the nickname of a guy who really liked to jump scary when it worked there. And then Stan Lee was like, you know what, why don't I write a comic book that means nobody will ever associate this super important technology with anything except a big green guy.

How's that fucking? All right, in 1973, funds were reallocated away from DARPA unless the products had specific military application. And this devastated America science programs. And DARPA was a major source of funding for university science programs. The National Science Foundation was supposed to pick up the slack, but without picking up the check, that's pretty goddamn hard to do. Young Brainiacs,

blood from the underfunded university system and started much of the science and technology private history we have now. So I guess, thanks. Yeah. You know what that got us? Elon Musk, not worth it. All right. Come on. I mean, you all one of those bloated public sector flame throwers? They're bullshit. There's regulation. No, no. We you don't want that. No. All right. And from 1976 through 1981, DARPA focused its time on the pursuit of the finer things.

If by finer things, what you really mean are air, land, sea, and space technologies, primarily aimed at creating tactical armor and anti-armor programs, infrared sensing of shit coming from space, space lasers to shoot at missiles, anti-submarine warfare, advanced cruise missiles, and defense applications of advanced computer technologies. This led to research into integrated circuits and a congressionally mandated particle beam program. More on that one later. This is like, basically my strategy when playing Siv.

Oh, the Mongols get an attack bonus on horseback cool. Eat a fucking air strike. It's interesting, Cecil. My strategy in Siv is being way too stupid to play Siv. So that's one of the different angles for my father is proud of me for playing sports. That's it's 1981. Darp has focused its mission on information processing technologies and aircraft programs, such as the National Aerospace Plane. This was a hypersonic single stage to orbit spacecraft and passenger space liner was kind

of fucking amazing actually. They canceled this thing after the prototype was created in the 1990s Unfortunately, but the creation of that prototype led to a multitude of advances in material and aerospace design All right, well as wish I love the idea Theoretically that we pay a bunch of comic book pre-villains to make space lasers It seems like there also might be a downside to this. Oh, the downside? No, yeah. Imagine hundreds of scientists across universities and private industry all vying for that sweet, sweet defense contractor money in a time where we knew enough about science to build world-ending machines of near infinite destructive capability,

while living with a heightened sense of existential dread combined with virtually no long-term understanding of how any of this shit that we are building actually work. The things we're about to get pretty weird. Alright, well, when Tom says things we're about to get pretty weird, it usually means he's about to change clothes, so while he takes care of that, we'll pause for a little apropos of nothing. Roy Johnson, how the hell are ya? General! Nice to finally meet ya. I don't believe you've met my assistant yet.

This is Herbert York. General. Ah, pleasure York. Well, Jens, it's been a year of work and we're excited to hear what you have for it. Yeah, well, we're very excited to show you. As long as it doesn't conflict with NASA, I can tell you that pretty much whatever you bring me

will be a goat. Sorry, NASA, sir. Oh yeah, it's our new space division. Really exciting stuff. Those boys are coming up with. You should see that. Great stuff. Oh, uh, they did a space exploration.

Uh, space exploration, rockets, if it goes in the air, that's their department, son. Mm-hmm. Uh, may I be excused for a moment? Oh, sure. Yeah. So, Johnson, what I be excused for a moment? Oh, sure. You're, yeah. So, Johnson, what did they got for me? Well, uh, it'll be fun.

Uh, we, uh, we've got quite a few different projects. I like what you're, my God, damn, life. Ideas that he's, he's just, it's something unrelated. We got a bunch of these projects. They could be applicable to a wide variety of projects, really. And that's one of his favorite words. Air travel, we got going, water, travel, lots of stuff.

Stuff. Fucking face. Water Travel, so I can come to heaven and fuck stuff fucking face Inside joke even a Fashion we have something with fashion Sorry, sorry about that pardon me. I know problem. You were saying about fashion. Yeah Yeah, if you look at this Fasinor system that we've developed, it uses hooks and loops to make it like, you can, Oh, yeah.

You mean Velcro. Yeah, NASA boys have been working on this stuff for a year. Good stuff. Oh, they have. Oh, yeah, they have. Yeah. Sorry, pardon me.

Can I be a huge one more time? It just really could be. Oh, my own me. Absolutely. Well, general, gotta pardon me. Can I be excused one more time? It just really could be. Oh, my own me, that's a little bit. Bye. Well, uh, general, uh, gotta be honest. Uh, I don't think that, uh, a lot of the stuff we had in mind is, um, Is, uh, it's gonna work out.

No! No! That was specific. I'm gonna kill my family and then burn down my house around their fucking corpses for fuck's sake. Fuck, fuck, fuck! So was that. And now that we've invited a long series of emails about how NASA had nothing whatever to do with the creation of Velcro, I guess we can get back to the story nerd. So, TUNCH, you're fine. You're promising us some weird shit.

All right, well, for all the genuinely awesome successes that DARPA had, they also had some astonishingly bizarre projects, crazy. You know, that guy in the meeting that no one likes You just starts off with you know come on guys. There's no bad ideas Well, there are like imagine if that phrase was followed up with also here's three point two billion dollars and virtually no oversight so I This let is some pretty awesomely crazy projects. Jesus, it sounds like the home loan industry in the 2000s.

You know, or the Trump campaign of very recently. Or Tom's life choices. Those are going well. Well, thank you. I'll move on. Again, do you want a safe flame thrower? Or fucking good one. You like?

You want a good one? All right. So, Tom, could you give us some examples? Alright, how about nuclear powered robot cyborg insects? Like more real. Nice, alright, more about fuckbots. Let's do this. Fuckbot secrets. Alright, this one was named Project Dragonfly and there are working prototypes for this.

These were powered by a nuclear battery using radioactive isotope nickel 23. These tiny insects power packs can fuel the surveillance electronics onboard these things for a hundred years. They're the size of the pad of your finger and they're designed to work either solo or in conjunction with other robot cyborg bugs to surreptitiously collect and report data using a variety of tiny little sensors. Oh, and they're also designed to be able to be mass produced with a 3D printer. What? And one application suggested would be to release like a thousand of them into the cave systems in Afghanistan to find bin Laden a little dated.

That was a note that I found kind of adorable since he was actually captured, you know, in a house in Pakistan. But you know, whatever a war is a war, right? So you hear that early on sets gets a freinialistner. The government has insects watching you. Great work, Tom. It's great. Cool. Maybe I'll turn on some podcasts and pop my pills. No.

Die, everyone at this Wendy's. After hearing this, I feel like our planet has three levels of technology. The weaver place their dragonflies with fake dragonflies. Do you think they'll notice level? Then there's like, uh, how the fuck is this Bluetooth speaker not connected? I just fucking connected it. It says it's connected, but there's no goddamn sound.

And then I just found a Coke bottle. It must be God level. Like those are the three levels. That's it. All right, so Tom, that's pretty awesome, but they're not really cyborgs. They're just bugs wearing robot vest. That doesn't really count.

Is there anything else here we can be proud to have funded? Okay. Fine. DARPA also spent a ton, a ton of time and money trying to solve the problem of how to communicate with submarines when they're deep underwater. They immediately scrapped the will pass notes using Orca's plan. I don't know if I'm immediately. Yeah, because see, so one solution that they propose,

and they spent years and millions of dollars testing this involved examining whether mothers had psychic connections to their children. Well, a particular interest and what was studied was actually was whether bunnies had a psychic connection to the offspring, to the little bunny offspring. So the idea was pretty simple. If bunnies did have a psychic connection and they could tell when their little baby bunnies were harmed, then you could take a baby bunny on the surface.

And when you wanted to tell the deep water submarine to rise up to the surface and shoot nuclear missiles at the bad guys, well, you simply killed a baby bunny. and when you want to tell the deep water submarine to rise up to the surface and shoot nuclear missiles at the bad guys, well, you simply kill the baby bunny. But the mother would react and a soldier sounds the armageddon alarm and the subsurface is and then all life on earth is extinguished. So not surely sure why they scrapped that one. What if the bunny died in natural causes, though? Like, you know, I wrote my interjection

thinking I had out absurd at this group. I have been one down. I've no one down. Oh, the thing is, you step up. Is what they invented that with a fucking mad lib? You're just like, all right, we're gonna take a baby, blank, noun, and then blank it, verb, and see if the mother notices.

So human and fuck. Okay, I heard kill a baby rabbit. Great. Great. In 1966 during the Vietnam War, it became pretty obvious that transporting soldiers and supplies through the thick marshy jungle was just like a real pain in the ass. And it was also noted that like Asian elephants were really good at well being Asian elephants in those same jungles. So the scientists at DARPA Well, they got the idea like we should just build a mechanical Asian elephant

I'd trump through the jungle carrying our supplies and our troops. Fuck it. Why don't all take the Asian though? Like fucking DARPA, they make it look like Mickey Rooney and breakfast at Tiffany's and super obvious in their hours. Now, this particular idea proved to be rather too ambitious even for DARPA. And so they just invented agent orange instead and they got rid of the whole jungle problem. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like part of the whole jungle problem. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I feel like part of the problem though is that they were going to need somebody at some point to actually say, hear me out, Mr. President robot elephants. And they didn't have a single person on the payroll. You do that with a straight face. Right. All right. Hear me out. New idea.

We take our elephant robot prototypes. We give them guns and badges and we have them patrol futuristic Detroit as peace officers. We call it Operation Dumbocop. What do you guys say? I don't know, Cecil. Can you prove to me that Sylvester Stallone isn't a mechanical elephant? I cannot. I absolutely cannot.

Oh, that was a good one. Right. It's uncanny. It sounds just like it. All right. Guys, has this ever happened to you? You want to set off a massive nuclear explosion, but all your conventional nuclear weapons are monstrously heavy and difficult to transport. Yes.

I know. Well, DARPA has a solution. There must be an easier way. Introducing, all right, well, thankfully not because this two was scrapped. The heathenium bomb. Now the idea was to use a different technology to start the nuclear chain reaction, a technology that wasn't annoying and cumbersome and heavy. So the potential nuclear blast could be tucked neatly into a suitcase. Or when you needed it most.

And you're about to get on a plane with it to use it. And it's just like, sorry, we have to gate check that for you. There's no more space in the overheads. So. Okay. They just wrote about elephant. Just walk past me. Come on.

All right. And the best part in the article noted is the weapon wouldn't fall under existing international weapons ban. So thankfully, the science was shaky on this one. And we probably maybe don't have the clearly have those. The one-of-way suitcase, proud sponsor, a citation needed. Honestly, if I know anything about the US government, if we had these President Johnson would have taken a bunch of photo ops for them on TV when no was a kid just like. And we can't forget about Operation Argus.

Believe me, we've tried. I know it. And in an attempt to create a missile shield, I love this. Scientists figured they could use the Earth's magnetosphere to their advantage, just sitting up there doing nothing all day. So the idea was to simply detonate enough nuclear weapons in the magnetosphere and then the resulting mass of electrons before a barrier that would then prevent the bad missiles from hitting off the mass of The mass of electrons.

Now, this was actually tested. They tested this. In 1958, and then they scrapped this, presumably when someone looked up and said, Fuck you guys, I was just kidding before crouching safely under his desk. This same guy invented the keto diet. If we just need a butcher fat, it won't get fat. I know it sounds dumb when I say it like that. Right, but if I get killed by a nuke while I'm eating the fat, who cares, right?

That's the thing. Okay, what do we make cartoon rabbit? It blows out their wick when they're trying to light the bomb. No, stupid. No, okay, what if it wears yellow face, the rabbit? Yes. Oh, shit. I'm gonna use several billion dollars.

Thank you. How about prosthetics? I mean, I'm not searching for it, but if it's in a porn, it's what I finish on. So. That's unsettling. DARPA has actually created artificial arms that plug into your brain,

and then you can control those arms with your mind. Amazing, right? I mean, that's amazing. And it is amazing and we should stop there, but we won't. And we aren't. And we haven't because if you can mind, control an arm that's attached to your brain, you can also plug your mind into other machines and control them like fighter jets, which is real and which is happening. Or really just like

whatever else the military decides to build and then connect to the brain of whoever they want it to kill. Yeah, and when we finally get this technology, we're going to use it to fucking heart Instagram photos faster. I feel like at this point, the most we can hope for is that when the government turns against we useless eaters, the last thought in our heads before we slip into the cold darkness of eternity will be, man, that thing that killed me was fucking awesome. I'm about to get dick slapped to death by fucking star scream.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what?

Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what?

Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? Yeah, what? to connect with their targets. So that's a thing, which is way better than the bullet guided lasers they scrap last week. Neither of which we had in November of 1964. We are

inventing these now for the very first time. I'm just picturing the headlines. The year is 2024 and the NRA strongly stands against the new anti child laser bullet laws. What if you need to shoot a child says Jane a lot. Yeah, but the bullets are killing enough people. We better laser guide that shit. Yeah, every classroom needs to be full of lasers and bullets and stampeding elephant deathbots.

It's safer. Yeah, a good guy with a stampeding elephant deathbot to counter the okay, but if I recall correctly, Tom, DARPA also funded some way, Dumber shit than this, right? They did. DARPA also spent a ton, a ton of time and money investigating the paranormal. There it is. In fact, in the 1960s and 1970s, there was kind of a psychic front to the arms race. And the idea here was that paranormal or psychic phenomenon could be weaponized, particularly for Espina.

So DARPA sent a team to visit with Yuri Geller, the spoon bending asshole. They investigated. Please say a fucking Gatling gun that shot Ben Spoon's. Please say it. I'm calling on Godatling gun that shot Ben Spoon's. Please say it. I got a shot Ben Spoon. Can I wish? No. And so they investigated remote viewing.

And that's a funny thing that I mentioned before, of course. They met with coven of witches to investigate whether magic work, I think it was pretty useful. That one. They attended conferences full of psychics and psychologists George Lawrence traveled the country for DARPA looking for quote anything that work. Nothing. By the way, if you want to read a record of some of the world's top scientists falling for shitty magic tricks and cold readings, the interviews they did with Gellar during this

process are now public and they are fucking amazing. They 22 stop stop putting things on our body, David Blanafelt. You just put that card in my pocket, obviously. All right, and guys, all of those are amazing. They are, but by far, by fucking a mile, my absolute favorite thing ever is Project C-Saw. In the 1960s, America was, I know. And this is, this isn't silly. This is a great idea. And I don't know why we don't have this. America in the 1960s was pretty sure that we were going to go to war with the USSR. And that's like, today, except now we call them Russia and we're already losing. But in the 1960s, the fear wasn't

that our electorate would be subverted to psychological manipulation. So much that the USSR would lob thousands of megatonage of hydrogen bombs at us and obliterate all life on the planet. And this was such a real and genuine danger that all ideas were on the table to stop this terrible calamity before we could do it to them first. And so Project C saw was born. Okay. Okay. it to them first. And so project CSA was born. Okay, okay, all right, hear me out. You get

a large two by four on a falcom and when they shoot the missile, we wait until it hits the end of the two by four and then we jump on our end of the two by four really quick and then we just send it right back to him. We said no cherry balls, what the fuck? Yeah. What if we, okay, no, what do we get a robot elephant to sit on one end of their seesaw? And they just can't use it. It's a dress like an Asian though. And it's dressed like an Asian baby. And it's nice to sit.

I'm with you. I'm with you. 100%. All right, not quite so crazy, but little, little bit crazy. The idea here was simple. If completely fucking bonkers, You see, intercontinental ballistic missiles are like, they're really fast, and so to intercept them and destroy them in flight is a terrifically difficult thing to do. Project C-Saw proposed an elegant solution.

First, fire a charged beam of subatomic particles at the inbound missiles and destroy the mid flight on the molecular level. It's the subatomic version of fuck me, fuck you. Huh? Okay, okay. Oh, no, no, no. So we don't want the missiles to hit us. Okay. But what if we shoot them out of the sky when they're right above us?

I think we'll be 100% protected from their effects, I think. I'm pretty sure that's my 100% protected. There are a lot of electrons up there in the sky. Yes. Hopefully. 100% for jacket. There are a lot of electrons up there in the sky. All right, so a charged ray gun of light speed subatomic sniper and blasting the way through enemy missiles to keep our Walmart safe is really fucking awesome. So guys, here's how this is supposed to have worked, right? First, you're going to need rather a lot of electricity, like a really lot, like millions and millions of volts. So naturally, the weapons first stage is to detonate a series of nuclear bombs deep underground

beneath the Great Lakes. Okay, maybe, maybe, maybe. We just stop right there. I mean, it sounds like the scene in Fight Club where Jack beats his own ass. Yeah. Yeah, confused the Russians into thinking we went with the Kant Newcastle. If we knew us first defense, yeah. All right.

Nuke the hostage. Nope. Okay. Now as soon as I said it, I hear it now. That's all right. So after the detonations, the lakes will then drain all that stupid, useless, fresh water in a period of about 15 minutes into an unbelievably huge hydroelectric generator, which will spin up and it would provide the power for the supergun. So, okay, that's step one. Step one, very simple stuff. I'm just picturing at that meeting. Sorry, Dave, did you step one, step one, very simple stuff. I'm just probably having this. Just picturing at that meeting, sorry, Dave,

did you say destroy the great lakes to charge your super-try? Yes, and I'm never gonna get through this if you keep interrupting. Do you wanna hear about the elephant part or not? That's coming up. All right, but did DARPA count for the potential interference from the lone hero? Oh, I feel like that Jesus, but...

Bruce, well, is somebody. Alright, so they've got the power, but now you have to accelerate all those particles, and you basically need like an enormous barrel for this. So naturally, the thing to do is to detonate more nuclear explosions, deep underground, to create hundreds of miles of underground tunnels for those particles to accelerate through. And then the particles once accelerated, but then burst forth from the radioactive underground tunnels blasted into the atmosphere, collide with the Soviet missiles and basically save

us just long enough so we could launch our own cataclysmic apocalypse weapons at the other guys who, since they don't have a bunch of Stupid great lakes to drain are basically screwed. So point America I think this is how Trump is gonna deal with the forest fires in the future if the raking doesn't work All right, so if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, Tom, what would it be? Crazy billionaire money, man. I want crazy billionaire money. All right.

But if you can't get that, would you settle at least for a quiz from our panel? Fine. All right, Tom. Obviously, DARPA has done some amazing and important work, but there are a few technological advancements they seem to have overlooked. What should be their next project? Is it A, voting machines that don't magically break when crossing the Mason-Dixon line?

They were straight for everyone. He... Is it B, fuck robots? Seriously, do you know how many problems would be solved by actual fuck robots? Come on, nerds. That's all of them. See, a light bulb that doesn't explode into 10,000 tiny little knives if you look at it for too long. What kind of light bulbs are you buying? The ones made of glass that my wife drops on the floor every six minutes. Don't look at them.

Why are you looking at it? Or D vegan cheese that doesn't taste like wet salt. Well, it's it's clearly not D because nobody cares about vegans. I'd be a waste of resources and light bulbs. That just sounds funny in your house. The fuck robots would make heath far too happy. That makes me uncomfortable. I think you just get more erections. So I have to go with A, if the voting machines, although that's a little pie in the sky.

Oh, incorrect. No. He can cheese, what? Be correct. Correct. Yes. I knew I'd get that answer right. Yeah.

Nice job getting that one right, Tom. I got another one for you. Besides dressing up in yellow face and trampling Asian people, what's the best line of work for a cyborg Asian elephant death pot to fall back on if that doesn't work out? Is it a trampling white people while they're trophy hunting in Asia and Africa? Because that would be awesome. B, respond to Heath's phone calls about making an elephant robot porn from Tusk till dawn. Obviously would be the new.

Or C, a Chinese restaurant called Baby Elephant Walk. The pan. All right. Well, it's, I'm, the, I know for sure it's not B because it implies that Heath makes phone calls. So I feel like we're pretty sure that's not it. That's not it. That's called junk in the trunk too. It was not.

So I'm going to have to go with the Chinese restaurant because I'm hungry right now. That is correct. So my time nailed it. All right. Tom, what did DARPA develop for the perpetual bachelor's slash insoles of the world? A, a golden retriever real dial that allows for all the petting without all the taking care of a living thing. So sad. Be a travel booking website that finds couples that don't mind a third wheeled tag along on overseas trips. You don't have to pack

your crushing loneliness. I'm just going to get a fight. You guys finished up. See, a self building, a home edition that would allow you to stay with all your favorite friends and family or D, a cereal bowl harness that attaches to your shirtless body is to lead over the sink. With one hand, you could dab the tears out of your eyes with the other. Okay. That's stupid.

I'd always wear a shirt that's dumb. That one doesn't even make sense. I don't wear no shirts. These are actually all pretty enticing, but I'm gonna go with the cereal bowl harness because I just want that to exist now. You know what? I do too, buddy.

I would have been holding it with my hand like a chump. This whole time. Jesus, Jesusump. Yeah, like an asshole. Jesus Christ. You're correct. Yes. All right. Well, looks like nobody made a start right in that question. When I started writing that question, I didn't have heath in mind, but as I started writing

it was like the matrix. Like it started to happen. Yeah. Like I just saw. Yeah. Yeah. That's fun for all of us. What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving? That just saw. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun for all of us. Yeah. Yeah.

What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving? Yeah. Yeah. Everyone invited you to come have Thanksgiving with them and you ignored all of them until the last minute. Oh. I've not decided yet. Perfect summary.

All right. Well, nobody managed to best Tom this week, so he's going to take over his host next week and he'll decide who has to write the next essay. Alright, well I don't think Cecil has much going on these days, I'm gonna pick Cecil. No, not really. Alright, well for Cecil Eli Heath and Tom, I'm Noah, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week, but by then Cecil will be an expert on something else. Between now and then you can hear more profane absurdities from Tom and Cecil over on cognitive dissonance and you can hear more absurd profanities

from Heath, Eli and me on the skating aides, the skeptic right hand, God awful movies. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com. So I have citation pod or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out our past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pod dot com Hello Ashley welcome to citation needed Ashley the show where we read an article to you Ashley All right, hello Aubrey welcome to citation needed Aubrey welcome. This is the show where we read an article.

He threw it. Hurry up. The show's doing 20 minutes. I'm still on the A's. Damn it. I have nowhere to go.