Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - What happens if you explode a nuclear bomb in space?

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Daniel and Katie touch on the explosive question of nuclear weapons and explain the impact of space-based explosions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want or gone.

Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you. I take it all. I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming it?

I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me, I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, Dr. Angela Nealbarnett and I discuss flightings.

What is not a norm is to allow it to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do, the things that you were meant to do. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. too high, but I've always wanted to see one of those building demolitions. Oh, that does sound fun. I'd love to see you blow up soup or watch a building get exploded. I wonder if they sell tickets to those events. I hope they go on tour and I hope they come to my city. What about you?

What is the biggest explosion that you have seen? Well, there was the time that I made a strawberry smoothie without putting a lid on the blender and I'm still cleaning up strawberry in the kitchen years later. but I did once see a shoe store explode when an errant firework hit it on New Year's Eve. It was crazy you could feel the heat from blocks away. That's crazy. That's amazing. I'm sure you were going to say something more dramatic, though.

More dramatic than a flaming shoe store? But I thought, so you grew up in Los Alamos. Like, isn't that the home of the atomic bomb? It is. But we don't just, like, set them off on holidays, you know? That seems like a shame. I guess you could say we've kind of blown it. You didn't blew it, and that's the problem.

Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I hope to never be near a nuclear explosion. I am Katie Golden. I host the podcast Creature Feature, and I hope there's never a nuclear explosion anywhere, ever. Space, Earth, what have you? It seems like a bad sign of things to come. Are you saying that nukes can never be used for good? You're not aware of the peacetime nuclear weapons program or the design of the Orion spaceship,

which literally uses nuclear weapons blowing up behind it in order to propel it forward. I mean, if you're basically going to do big space farts with nukes to make your spaceship go, I'll make an exception. All right. We have already broken down your barriers here. And so welcome to the podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHeart Radio, in which we dive deep into everything that happens in the universe, how it all works, how it all began, how it all might end, and how humans might bring about their own demise. I'm a big fan of life on Earth. I love all the animals on Earth, love all the plants and the humans, most of them, 99% of humans.

And, you know, I have a lot of nuclear anxiety when it comes to the planet Earth because I don't want one going off and, you know, destroying a bunch of stuff, irradiating things, maybe causing a new ice age with the clouds of debris. But I guess if it's blown up in space, I'm a little less worried. Well, this to me is a really interesting area because it brings together the sort of fascinating progress we make in physics as we start to understand the way the universe works, what the forces are that underlie everything, how they weave themselves together to make our reality. Understanding that also gives us new power, the power to use that knowledge to develop new technologies, which of course can be good in peacetime like transistors and iPhone. but also can be used to make weapons of mass destruction that are pointed at civilian populations for political gain. And so while we like on this podcast to think about the physics side of it, the scientific edge of knowledge,

how we can always push that forward. And we generally think about that knowledge as purely good, as satisfying our curiosity, scratching our itch that wonders about how the universe works. It's not possible to really live in a bubble and pretend that that knowledge can't be used in all. all sorts of ways that the original scientist who worked on it aren't in control of. Personally, I did grow up in Los Alamos, home in the Manhattan Project, in Los Alamos National

Laboratory, where weapons projects are ongoing to this day. And both of my parents worked at the lab and worked on weapons-related projects. What exactly they did? I don't know. I didn't know. I will never know because I don't have such a clearance to know such secrets. But such power over the universe comes with real responsibility. Yeah, I think I remember that a lot of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project became very anti-nuclear proliferation.

You know, it's something that I think people who really understand the devastating power of nukes also are very much opposed to uncontrolled proliferation of nukes. So I don't think it's something where scientists are, there's a bunch of mad scientists who really just want to blow up the planet. And I think most of the scientists who really understand this stuff are also probably pretty anxious and would like a world with fewer nukes. Yeah, absolutely. I do know that my mother worked on nuclear nonproliferation programs, ways that you can detect nuclear fuel and nuclear explosions, et cetera. But my father definitely worked on the weapons side of it. And I asked him once, not of course like, tell me some nuclear secrets, but how do you feel about working on the design of huge weapons that are in the end pointed out? had civilian populations.

And, you know, back in the 80s when he started that job, it was a different era. We were still in the Cold War and developing our nuclear capabilities sort of felt patriotic back then. It felt like, hey, you're contributing to your country. You're protecting us. You're defending us. I'm not saying that it's morally crisp and clean. I certainly chose to do particle physics because it has no weapons applications and nobody's

ever going to use my research to kill anybody. Not yet. They haven't. Not yet. Give me a pin in a piece of paper and I'll come up with something. That's right. The Higgs boson bomb by Katie Goldman. Well, nuclear weapons are very powerful and very dangerous and they've also captured the public imagination.

And I get a lot of interest in our podcast email box about nuclear weapons. People wonder, what would happen if you drop the nuclear weapon into the sun? Or could we really use nuclear weapons to blow up the polar ice caps on Mars and to make more atmosphere? Or what exactly happens when you drop a nuclear weapon in X? Basically, I get these questions where X is anything. And so we're starting a new series of podcast titled, What Happens If You Explode a Nuke in Blank? And we're going to explore everywhere you can imagine putting a nuclear weapon.

So today, where are we exploding that nuke? Well, we're not putting that nuke in any sort of biological locations. We're mostly going to focus on the physics locations. And today on the podcast, we'll be answering the question. What happened? if you explode a nuke in space. So we are definitely cordoning off any of the space whales, any of the space jellyfish,

any kind of free-floating space creatures that might be in the way of this nuke. And presumably we're exploding it just in space, space, right? Like where there's not too much around, just pure space. Just pure space. Exactly. And I think this question is super fascinating from a, scientific point of view because mostly what we know and what we imagine about nuclear weapons comes from the interaction of the nuclear blast with the atmosphere or with the earth those shockwaves

and that doesn't happen in space so we'll go in detail through exactly what does happen in a nuclear explosion and how that propagates through space when it's not surrounded by a cocoon of air there's also the really fascinating political and sort of militaristic side of it as humanity tries to build a space-based civilization space war is a big question and And so, like, understanding what happens when you blow up a nuke in space from a sort of political or military strategic point of view is also really interesting and important. Could we go somewhere in the universe and not put wars in there? I think only if we don't bring the humans, right? The wars come with the humans.

I think only puppies should go to space so that don't start any wars. But that's also a really fascinating question. You see in a lot of science fiction novels, human civilization spread out through the galaxy or humans and aliens spread out through the galaxy, able to access all these vast resources and yet still fighting, right? Still having wars. And I wonder if that's really true. I often pose that question to our science fiction author guests. Like, what are these people fighting about? There's essentially limitless resources.

Like, you want water? Go to Neptune. It's basically a planet of water. You want gold? There's like enormous blobs of gold out there. platinum like this asteroids made of platinum if you need something don't come kill us for it just go get it if you want energy like the sun is out there dumping out energy it seems to me that once you make it to space i don't know why people would still be having wars unless they're just

fundamentally grumpy that could be i think that if you have resources spread out relatively fairly right like you don't have a space king that's hoarding all the neptune water for himself that yeah it would make sense that there would be fewer wars because I think when people have a lot of resources, they have a good quality of life. Why would they want to go to war? You know, what would be the purpose for the everyday person to rescue it all for war? Again, if we have like space monarchies, then yeah, there might be some wars. Yeah, well, there are some really interesting science fiction explorations of this, like the culture series and other like post-scarcity novels where basically everybody has everything they ever want. You just ask for something and you

get it. And they explore like, what would life be like? in that situation. Anyway, back to the topic of today's podcast. We are not yet there. We are not yet in outer space living among the riches where everybody gets their own platinum throne. Instead, we're still down here on Earth and wondering what would happen if you blew up a nuclear weapon in space. And so as usual, I pulled our listeners to hear what they thought might happen in this scenario. If you would like to participate in this segment of the podcast, giving your informed or uninformed answers for us to hear, please don't be shy. Write to me too. questions at Danielanhorpe.com. So think about it for a minute. Do you know what would happen

if we blew up a nuclear bomb in space? Here's what our listeners had to say. Probably something very similar to what happens if you explode a nuclear bomb, not in space. A lot of energy is released. Basically, it's what the sun is doing, so it's just a bunch of energy pouring out into space. I think the exploding a nuclear bomb in space would have very little effect. it would be a pretty clean explosion if there are some radioactive particles but there's loads of them flying around in space anyway so essentially I have no concerns go for it

so if I understand right how a nuke works it requires a chain reaction between the atoms of our atmospheres so in deep space without atmosphere it will have no effect you'd see a big huge round flash blinding flash of light and then you wouldn't hear anything, I guess, because it's the vacuum of space. And then as soon as all the fuel, the hydrogen was, or uranium or plutonium was gone, it would be done. And I don't think you'd see any debris because there's no, like, dead star to light it up.

Is this an atomic bomb or a hydrogen bomb? I think either way, I think you'd just make a tiny little sun for a second. And then not much would happen except for some more radiation in space. I assume it would just sort of do the same thing it does here without a shock wave. I believe that unless it's something close or is something to, you know, to a planet or maybe close to, I don't know, like a nebula, maybe it will, you know, push away that. But other than that, maybe the only thing in space that will happen, you know, if it's in the vacuum space, it will create maybe a little bit of gravitational waves, maybe. I don't know. Well, you won't get a mushroom cloud, that's for sure, because that only happens in the atmosphere. So when a nuclear explosion happens, I believe that it releases basically lots and lots of radiation

in the form of photons and radioactive particles. So I imagine like a big, bright ball of light that will flash for a second and disappear. I would suppose that the nuclear bomb would still explode and having nothing for the explosion to press back against. I would expect that the explosion would be equal in all directions and that the residual matter would fly out in all directions equally. That's a lot of different answers, really interesting ideas. I think the main thing people are thinking of like in space, right, you don't have. have atmosphere, you don't have air, so you're not going to have the things that air and atmosphere provides like, say, a shockwave or sound. Yeah, it's basically like a little sun in space is a

great little argument. There was somebody who said something about how it requires a chain reaction in the atmosphere, so in space it'll have no effect, which I think might have some misunderstanding of how a nuclear weapon works. But on the whole, yeah, these are great answers. Well, how I think nuclear explosions work is you take an atom and you get a little axe, very sharp axe, and you split it in half, and that releases a bunch of energy and it explodes. Tell me I'm wrong. You're wrong, Katie. Although you could be wronger. I mean, there is some elevates.

That is correct. Essentially, there's two ways to make a nuclear explosion. One is fission and one is fusion. Fission is when you're cracking a big, heavy atom open. So you have like uranium or something, which already is on the verge of breaking apart. And you take a little axe, which in this case is a neutron, and you shoot it at the uranium and it breaks open and it makes more neutrons. And those neutrons fly out and hit other uranium atoms, which then crack open and release energy and more neutrons. And then you get this chain reaction.

And so if your axe is basically a tiny little neutron axe, then maybe that works. And actually, isn't Thor's hammer supposed to be made out of neutron star? So there's already a precedent there for, like, tools made of neutrons. I knew Marvel was scientifically accurate in every way. That's the fission part where you have a bunch of unstable, large atoms being hacked apart by neutrons. And then that, in turn, releases more neutrons and that hacks apart. Other unstable atoms. You mentioned, though, there's a fusion one as well.

Yeah, exactly. so that's vision and the design of a fission bomb is actually quite interesting like the way you get that to blow up because if you just have a bunch of uranium sitting around it's not going to have a chain reaction unless it has enough density like you pack those things dense enough then it's going to blow up but what you want in a bomb is something that blows up when you want it to not just like when you build it right you want something like a fuse and so you need a controlled explosion and so what they do is they have two pieces of uranium both of which do not have enough matter. to blow. They're subcritical masses. And then what happens in the bomb is you basically smash those two together, combine them together to make a super critical mass when they can actually trigger this runaway effect and cause the explosion. And sometimes they even have like a little trigger like a pellet of polonium or beryllium or something to get the first neutrons going. But you're right, that's all fission. And so the first bomb that was ever developed and was blown up in Alamagordo, New Mexico, not too far from where I grew up, was a fission bomb. But there's

another much more powerful nuclear process that we now have a handle on, and that is fusion. Fusion is the opposite. Instead of breaking up a big heavy atom to release energy, you're sticking two light atoms together to make a heavier one. So two protons, for example, come together to make helium. It's actually a little bit more complicated. You end up with like multiple protons making multiple helium nuclei, but squeezing light atoms together to make heavier ones releases energy, just like chopping up heavier atoms to make lighter ones, releases. energy. You mentioned that the fusion bombs are more powerful. Why is that? Yeah, that's a great question. And people also wonder, like, why is it that when you stick light materials together to make

heavier ones, you release energy? And if you break up heavier ones, to make lighter ones, you release energy. And the answer to both questions just comes from the sort of energy structure of the nucleus. So when you squeeze two protons together to make helium, the way those two protons are bound together by the strong force contains like a deep potential well. Sort of like the earth falling into a gravitational well being captured by the sun. Those two protons capture each other. So you need a lot of energy to break that up. Like if you wanted to take helium and break it up into hydrogen, you'd have to zap it with a really

powerful laser. You have to add energy to that. So the energy that's released from fusion has to do with the difference between the sort of energy structure of two protons that are far apart from each other and two protons that are bound together into helium and why that number is big, it just has to do with the strong force and like how powerful it is. On the other side of the spectrum, when you're breaking up uranium into lighter stuff, that's a really big heavy nucleus and it's a little unstable already because of electromagnetism, which is pushing all those protons apart. And the strong

force isn't as powerful because those protons are further apart from each other, just because the nucleus is like physically getting so big that the strong force isn't as powerful over those distances. So it's a little bit easier to break that up and the strong force bonds aren't as powerful because the distance is a little bit greater there. So it all has to do with like the structure of the energy levels of the nuclear formation, which are super complicated. So when something heavy unstable atom, I thought that things like uranium would sort of naturally decay because they are unstable. Why don't they just spontaneously explode when they are decaying? You mean why don't you get runaway nuclear reactions in nature?

Exactly. Actually, you can. The crucial thing is just having enough uranium. Uranium is typically dilute out in the world. It's in oxides and it's not very pure. But if you do happen to have a fairly pure uranium deposit like sitting underground, they will undergo a natural fission reaction. And there's a spot in Africa where they're very certain that a couple of billion years ago

there was enough uranium and it started a natural fission reaction and like cook the rock and, like, heated up the whole thing. We did a whole podcast episode about it a year or so ago. Uranium, of course, is unstable, and so it decays. And the kind of uranium you need is getting more and more rare. So it's not a likely thing to happen again. Like the conditions for natural fission reactions on Earth without human intervention are no longer likely to exist.

Oh, that's really interesting. So back to the nuclear bombs. Like what, either for a fission bomb or a fusion bomb, like once you have said, off that reaction. What happens, like, on planet Earth exactly? Like, what is the effect, the impact of a nuclear bomb? So all bombs essentially are just a rapid release of energy. Some process, which is exothermic, may be chemical for, like, dynamite or nuclear for fusion and fission bombs, but just a very rapid release of energy. And the crucial things to understand is how that energy is carried. And in the case of nuclear weapons, it's not just different

carriers of energy relative to chemical weapons, but it's also just much more dramatic, right? There's like so much more energy released per gram of fuel because it's much more efficient at extracting energy from those bonds. Chemical bonds in dynamite don't have nearly as much energy as the nuclear bonds that we're releasing in nuclear weapons. So you get different energy carriers flying out and you just get a lot more. So the energy comes out in terms of photons. So like infrared photons, visible light photons, UV photons, all of those things, you also get a bunch of particles. You get neutrons, you get electrons, you get protons, you get gamma rays, you get all sorts of crazy things shooting out from the explosion. When I've seen footage of test explosions of a nuclear bomb on like an uninhabited house, it looks like this huge, like wave of air almost just obliterating the house as it passes through.

what's causing that big shockwave of air? Is that just all these particles being released, this super energy particles, or is there some kind of heat that's also being released from the bomb? So when you detonate a nuclear weapon, you produce all of this energy in various forms. And then you have to ask like, okay, the shell of stuff around the nuclear weapon,

the air or the water or whatever, is that transparent to these energy carriers? Will it absorb that energy or will it just pass through? And in some cases it's transparent and in some cases it's not. So when it's not transparent, when it's opaque, when it's going to absorb that energy, then all that energy is getting dumped into the air. So, for example, a lot of those photons are absorbed by the air.

The infrared, for example, very efficiently absorbed by the air around the nuclear bomb, and that heats up the air. So the energy has been transformed from lower energy photons into temperature of the air. So now that air is super duper hot, right? You've superheated that air and it expands. And then that heats the air around it. And so that's where the shockwave comes from, from the dumping of that energy from the particles that come out of the nuclear weapons into the air itself. And then the air becomes part of the explosion.

I see. And so you're saying, unless it's transparent, I would assume that both air and water would absorb energy from a nuke. So it doesn't seem like there'd be anywhere on Earth where you wouldn't have an impact of a nuclear explosion, right? That's right. And so the breakdown is something like around 50% of the energy. in the air or in the water goes into forming this shock wave. Basically, it gets turned into sound, right? Sound is just matter pressing on other matters, compression waves.

So like half the energy, the nuclear bomb, is absorbed by the matter that surrounds it and then expands that. Something like 40% of it are photons to which the atmosphere or the water are mostly transparent. So visible light, UV light, right? The atmosphere is transparent to visible light. That's why we can see each other and we can see the sun. because the atmosphere doesn't tend to absorb photons in this range that we can see.

And that's, of course, no accident. That's why we can see these photons. We're evolved in a situation to see these very useful photons. So 50% into shockwaves, 40% into basically photons to which the atmosphere of the water is transparent. And then like 10% of the energy in things like neutrons and electrons, like other particles flying out like tiny bullets with high energy, which can also pass right through the atmosphere. So is it as hot as like having a little sun in that area where the bomb went off? Like how hot does that get? Yeah, it gets to millions of degrees, Kelvin.

It's really incredibly hot. It's a huge amount of energy. And that sounds really hot and it is really hot. And it's actually hotter than the surface of the sun, which is just a few thousand degrees Kelvin. And that's why it can release energy in like much, much higher wavelengths. Remember that the temperature of an object controls the energy spectrum that's released. The hotter it is, the higher the frequency, the higher energy, the radiation. And so that's why nuclear weapons release a lot of energy in the UV where we can't even see it because they are so dang hot.

It is extremely bright as well, right? Like I think that's something that everyone's kind of aware of how incredibly bright a nuclear explosion is, like you said, because the light passes through the air and then we can see it. Is it a white light or a yellow light? It'd be probably a white light, right? It's basically broad spectrum. And so if you're watching a nuclear explosion, you actually see sort of two flashes.

You see an initial flash of light because it's very, very bright, and it's very broad spectrum, and it looks very white. But then light that's released later is actually captured by the shockwave. So you have the first flash, which comes out very quickly. And then the shockwave comes out, and photons which sort of bump up against the inner side of that shock wave, don't see it as transparent because the shockwave is. made that air denser, and so it's no longer transparent.

And so until that shockwave dissipates, it's basically blocking the light from the nuclear weapon. And when it does, then you see a second flash. You know, it's producing light the whole time, but it's like momentarily blocked. So you see this characteristic double peak of gamma radiation when you blow up a nuclear bomb here on Earth, at least, underwater or in the air. The other thing I think people think of when we picture a nuclear explosion is that characteristic mushroom cloud. Why does it have such a

specific shape, that mushroom cloud shape? Is that just sort of basic physics when it comes to an explosion that's large enough or is there something else going on? That's basic physics from a really large explosion. It's typical for nuclear explosions because they are so powerful. You know, you have this sudden formation of a really large volume of lower density gases and then you get a buoyant mass of gas which rises rapidly giving you all this turbulent. and curling down around the edges.

But it can come from chemical explosions also if they are big enough. I see. Interesting. So when you have a nuclear explosion, you have this huge amount of energy released. It superheats the air, causes this shock wave, causes this massive amount of energy to be released in heat, in radiation, which, you know, is a real sucker punch after the effects of the bomb, right? Like you have this radiation in the area and people can get radiation poisoning.

But it dissipates. It explodes. The energy dissipates. It reeks whatever havoc it's going to reek. And then it kind of, it settles. The dust cloud settles. The radiation settles. And then it's a big explosion.

And how long does it last? Typically, like the explosion part of a nuclear bomb. So the actual reaction is very quick. But, you know, the shockwave travels at the speed of sound, which is something like a thousand feet per second. And so depending on the strength of the bomb, it can be like 30 seconds to a minute or so before that shockwave dissipates. And you're right that the initial danger is very, very strong.

You have the shock wave. You have the radiation exposure. But then there's the lasting effect of the fallout, right? You have released a bunch of radioactive material. Not all of it has fused or fizzed. And also that radiation creates more radioactive material. All these high energy neutrons can slam into other stuff, turning them into radioactive elements. And so the whole area is radioactive for a while.

And in the cloud, they're radioactive elements. produced when you have a fission reaction we know that it produces very dangerous toxic waste right that's why nuclear reactors have such a tricky problem to deal with and a nuclear bomb that's not contained at all it's just blown up into the atmosphere and so the fallout can be very dangerous and it can drift right you have wind for example so it can drift over hundreds of miles yeah i mean that's one of the considerations that countries have when they're thinking of using nukes it's like well if i use it on my neighbor that might just blow right back into my country exactly which i think is in a way good, right?

Because you should think a few times before you decide to use a nuke. But we should probably take a quick break, practice our duck and cover. And when we get back, talk about what happens when you explode a nuke in space, not on Earth. December 29th, 1975,

LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here. here to stay. Terrorism.

Law and order criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too frustrated. And now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.

Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age.

And it's even more likely that they're cheated. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford. And in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Othia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right? In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look

put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon. Megan Rapino to the show, and we had a blast.

We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete? The final. The final. And the locker room.

I really, really, like, you just, you can't replicate, you can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more. incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar A. Z. Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two. And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. So I've practiced my duck and cover a few times, which I'm sure would protect me really well if I was in the heart of a nuclear explosion. My desk is very sturdy. But we talked about what happens with a nuclear explosion on Earth. Hopefully we'll never see one ourselves. But what happens when you explode a nuke in space? Because space is very different from our planet Earth. It's missing a few things that we have that are nice to have here on Earth that protects us and other life. And so it seems like a nuclear bomb would react quite differently in space. Yeah, it's really different and in a fascinating way. The actual core reaction, of course,

is the same. When the bomb goes off, it doesn't need the atmosphere or water or anything around it in order to actually detonate. It's not like a fire where you're using the oxygen from the atmosphere to burn. It can go all by itself, so it's happy to blow up in space or underwater or underground or in the air. So the core reaction is no different, and the things that it produces are the same. So a nuclear bomb in space blowing up produces the same spectrum of photon energies and neutron energies and electrons, et cetera, as the nuclear bomb blowing up anywhere else. But of course, the immediate surroundings of the bomb are very different. And so now, instead of having some of that radiation immediately absorbed basically by a pillow that was surrounded the bomb,

a pillow of air or water or dirt. Now there's nothing there. So everything is transparent. So all that radiation, instead of getting dumped into some blanket or some pillow, just flies out. So it all stays as radiation and just flies out like a mini sun, as our listeners described, filling nearby space with very dangerous radiation.

So when I see things like in Star Trek or Star Wars, and they like fire some kind of missile and then you see this like big explosion with like a explodey cloud thingy. If you're doing it just at space, right, like maybe, I guess if you hit a spaceship, you could get some debris that causes a bit of a cloud. But if you're just firing out in space, what exactly does an explosion look like when you're just, it's just happening in empty space? Yeah, great question. Those science fiction explosions use cues from our intuition on Earth, you know, where things are. loud and they are hot. But in space, things would be different, right? There's no sound. I mean, there are some particles out in space. It's not totally empty. So technically speaking, there is

the ability to propagate sound waves, but there's no sound. And there's also no flames, right? So what you would see instead is a very bright flash of light because all those particles are just flying out. There's nothing burning there. You say maybe the ship itself would explode if there's like fuel on board or whatever. But there's no flame. There's no oxidization effects. No chemical burning there. So essentially it's just a very bright pinprick of light, extremely bright, like something you should definitely not look at. So you don't get that double flash, right, like you do with the nuke on Earth, because there's no shockwave to absorb the light from and kind of prevent it from reaching your eyes until the shock wave has moved on. Exactly. That shock wave is purely a product

of a race between the photons and the sound wave that's propagating out. But because there is no sound wave, there's no shock wave. There's nothing there to absorb that. radiation, all the radiation just flies out. And so it looks quite different. And what that means is that nuclear weapons are dangers over much greater distances in space because the radiation is not absorbed. And so if a nuclear bomb blows up in space, you can get significant radiation damage from it, even if you're much further away. Say we exploded a nuke somewhere in our solar system. Would that radiation potentially hit Earth? You still are protected by physics as one over distance squared law. The same with the sun is like a hundred times dimmer if you're 10 times

further away or electric fields go down by a factor of four if you're twice as far from the charge. There's all these one over distance squared law in physics, which are actually not hard to understand like from a geometrical point of view. You imagine like particles flying out from a nuclear bomb or photons flying out from the sun. The same certain number are released. And then as the radius grows, those particles are now spread out over a larger and larger sphere. And the area of that sphere goes like 4 pi r squared. So as that sphere gets larger, the same number of photons or dangerous particles are spread out over a larger area. So for any given area, the radiation drops like one over the distance squared. And so if you're far away from

this thing, you'll be safe. Now on earth, you can be just a couple of miles, two, three, four miles from an explosion and be mostly safe from the radiation because so much of it is absorbed into the atmosphere, but in space you've got to be like 40, 50, 60 miles to be as safe as you would be on Earth. Because essentially there's no protection, right? On Earth, you're kind of protected from this nuclear bomb by the atmosphere or by the ground or by the water. But in space, there's nothing there to shield you. Right. So is this radiation constantly spreading out or does it kind of stop dissipating after a while? Does it keep dissipating forever until it just sort of has equalized Yeah, great question. Well, the initial explosion, again, is very brief. The actual nuclear detonation

doesn't last very long. And so what you're thinking about is sort of like a pulse, like all this radiation in a sphere that's traveling out very, very fast, in many cases actually at the speed of light and then getting dimmer and dimmer as it goes. And so it's really just like a pulse that travels through space washing over things and damaging them. How long does that pulse last? Does it last like seconds or hours or years? Well, the pulse itself would last for less than a second. actual explosion itself doesn't take very long. So it's not like sitting there stewing continuing to produce pulses of energy. It's one very high intensity pulse over a short time. But it's various kinds of radiation also. There's photons of very high energies. And then there's neutrons,

of course. And there's also electrons. And the electrons can be particularly damaging and also kind of fascinating because the electrons are traveling at very, very high speeds. And they tend to radiate. So electrons, when they move to a magnetic field or anything, they change direction, they radiate photons. And so that creates this electromagnetic pulse. So all these electrons create this electromagnetic pulse, which can disrupt the flow of electricity or damage any sort of electronics. And you see this in science fiction all the time, right, that like electronics are blacked out when there's a nuclear bomb. And that's really true. It'll create like pulses of energy in electronics. That's really interesting. So if you're a spaceship, right, and you're riding

up and someone decides to blow up a nuke in front of you, you're really screwed in many ways. You've just got a huge dose of radiation, and then all of your electronics on your spaceship are going to get messed up by that EMP pulse. Is there anything else to look out for if you're on that spaceship cruising and someone blows up a nuke near you? Well, if you're on that spaceship, I really hope you have a special lead-lined room to protect yourself, like we do actually on the space station, because the sun, of course, is a huge source of radiation, and solar storms can generate EMPs and also other kinds of

radiation, which can damage satellites and people. And so they have a special room on the space station where the astronauts can go like a panic room when there's going to be like a high radiation solar weather event. And so I hope your spaceship is outfitted with one of those because if somebody blows up a nuclear bomb, it's going to damage your ship and also damage you if you're within tens of miles. We know that for like when you explode a nuke on Earth, long after the explosion, it's irradiated everything around. And depending on how large the explosion is, the nature of it, like with Chernobyl, the area in that exclusion zone is still radioactive. Like, it's still not necessarily a safe place to be. It's not like you will immediately

get radiation poisoning and die if you step foot in the exclusion zone, but you can get sick depending on how long you're in there and how close you get to the center where the explosion happened. But what happens, like, with this explosion in space, is there an area like, a sort of point in the middle that continues to be sort of radioactive or does that without anything to really absorb it? It just keeps moving until it hits something that it can be absorbed by. Yeah, great question. And remember, of course, Chernobyl was a nuclear meltdown of a reactor, not an actual nuclear explosion, so nothing blew up. So you still have a lot of the fuel and all that stuff there in that same location. The larger exclusion zone is because of the weather and the air that

pulled the smoke and the radioactive particles further away. So there was never actually a nuclear explosion there. And in space, you blow this bomb up. There's not going to be really anything left in the location of your detonation to poison people. Everything is going to fly out because there's nothing stopping it, right? There's nothing holding it in place at all. So you haven't poured radiation into a bunch of nearby dirt or water. Everything is just going to flow away.

So you could probably come back in, you know, a month or so after the nuclear bomb and the space would be no different from when you started. All of the dangerous elements will be flying out from the source in lots of directions, poisoning people or causing damage as they hit them. But the actual location of the nuclear explosion in space isn't going to be, like, affected in any way. Have we ever thought to blow up a nuke? I mean, I'm sure we've thought of it, but have we ever actually done it before?

Oh, yes. We have actually blown up nuclear weapons in lots of places. We've blown them up in war, unfortunately. we've blown them up above ground, we've blown them up underground, and we have actually done a nuclear explosion in space. So we don't even have to wonder about what this looks like. We know we have pictures. Well, that sounds terrifying.

Let's take another quick break. I'm going to watch the little duck and cover turtle learn some good lessons. And when we get back, I want you to tell me about blowing up nukes in space, which apparently we have already done. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.

Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now hold up, isn't that against school policy?

That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right? that this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela

Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show, and we had a blast. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations,

co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete? The final. The final. and the locker room.

I really, really, like, you just can't replicate, you can't get back, showing up to the locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candice Parker and college superstar AZ Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all.

The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two. And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.

So we are back to that little duck-and-cover turtle. He's got a turtle shell, but he's also got a helmet. Redundant? Anyways, now we're going to talk about how we actually have already blown up a nuke in space. It terrifies me that we may have pissed off some aliens and many generations from now they'll finally reach us and give us a real scolding. But Daniel, what happened? Why did we blow up space?

So nuclear testing started in 1945 with the Manhattan Project. The U.S., of course, the first country to develop these things and to test them and then to use them in war where thousands of people were killed horribly. And since then, there's been about 2,000 nuclear explosions conducted by humans. And in the early days, it was a free-for-all. There were no laws.

People were blowing stuff underground, above-ground, et cetera. But we pretty rapidly realized that blowing up stuff in our atmosphere was a bad idea. Creating radioactive particles and fallout that could drift anywhere. We blew up a bunch of islands, which is terrible, destroying people's homes. And so that was in the 50s. And things were, of course, very tense between the U.S. and the USSR. The U.S. had stopped atmospheric testing, but in the early 60s, the U.S.S.R started atmospheric testing again, which was sort of part of a larger political struggle within the USSR

to like stand up to the U.S. We really should have like a Russian political expert on to tell us about why they started that of again. But in 1962, the U.S. wanted to know like, hmm, well, what happens if you blow up a nuke in space? They were basically curious and they didn't want to do any more atmospheric testing. And so they tested a nuke over the Pacific in July of 1962. So I'm thinking like if we blow it up just a little.

bit above our atmosphere, that's not going to cut it. Like, how far away did we go? Because, you know, it seems like if you're too close, you can still have an impact on the earth that you're not going to want. Yeah, exactly. If it's too far away, you won't be able to see it because we don't have great instruments in space. If it's too close, then it's basically in your atmosphere and said they chose an altitude of 240 miles above the earth surface. And they launched a 1.4 megaton nuke. They launched it from Johnston Island, which is like 1,500 kilometers southwest of Hawaii. And the idea was like, well, if something bad happens, let's have it happen over less populated areas, I guess. And people imagine like, oh, that's far enough away from Hawaii to not be a big deal, right?

And they check with a scientist and the scientist's like, yeah, right, no problem. Turns out those scientists were wrong. Oh, boy. Yep. Scientists, especially physicists, can be wrong. Yeah, which is a big deal when you're talking about a nuke and talking about people. just trying to live their lives and then you're like,

but we're curious to see what this will do. Yikes. You can Google this thing. It's called Starfish Prime. And just as we expect, it makes a spherical explosion. So you don't get like a mushroom cloud

that's a product of blowing up in an atmosphere. You just get this spherical explosion. It's not completely perfectly spherical because a nuclear bomb is not perfectly symmetric. There's like some small differences in how the explosion happens based on exactly how the fuel is arranged, but it's almost completely spherical.

It kind of looks like a flower or like a drawing of a sun where you kind of make the outsides a little spiky. But yeah, it is pretty round. And you've got like this bright white point in the middle and then you've got sort of a blue corona around it and then a larger white corona around the blue. What is that sort of color difference? Why do you have that like bright white light and then this blue and then bright white light again on the outer edges.

Yeah, I think it's similar to the effect we were talking about in the atmosphere that there is some debris that comes out of the explosion. And then the radiation that's emitted after that is partially absorbed by some of that debris, some of those heavier ions that are created by the explosion. So you get this multiple effect with the products of the explosion, then absorb things that are later produced in the latter stages of the explosion. And it was a pretty dramatic event on Earth. Yeah, I mean, were people told this was going to happen?

People were told it was going to happen. And even the newspapers were aware, and they kind of advertised it. There's a headline in the Honolulu advertiser, which is a newspaper, which says, Nblast tonight may be dazzling, good view likely. And a bunch of hotels in Hawaii had like rooftop parties for people to watch this nuclear explosion happen. I would be in a basement. But what would it look like to someone on one of these rooftop parties? So you can't see the actual explosion the same way because of the atmosphere.

But there are these great pictures that people took from Hawaii, and you see all this air glow. You see all this red light because the radiation has hit the atmosphere and it's excited a bunch of oxygen atoms, which then glow. So it's basically like heated up the atmosphere, which then glows in this red light. I mean, that seems spectacular, but also maybe kind of apocalyptic looking. That would scare me. Yeah. And then after the actual explosion, there's a massive aurora scene for like thousands of kilometers. You know, the northern lights, these are high-energy particles hitting the atmosphere.

They're mostly funneled up to the northern and southern poles because of the magnetic field. But when a huge number of high-energy photons hit the atmosphere, they make the atmosphere glow. You don't just get red, you get greens and blues, depending on exactly what it is that has been like zapped and energized and then re-emitted. And so, whereas you don't normally see auroras in Honolulu, they have this massive aurora which stretched for thousands of kilometers over the Pacific. Well, maybe worth it to take a chance to accidentally blow up a bunch of people. But you did mention that the scientists had not quite calculated this right. So were people actually in danger here? Like, was there some negative consequences to this?

Well, it blew out streetlights in Hawaii. Oh, wow. So this electromagnetic pulse that was created went much further than the scientists thought. I think they didn't realize how much of that is absorbed by the atmosphere. when you blow this thing up on Earth or when you blow it up underwater. And so the radiation effects of this bomb in space were much broader than they had anticipated. And so, yeah, there were effects on Hawaii. They destroyed a bunch of satellites that were up in space.

Back then, there weren't that many satellites. This is the beginning of the space era. So only like six satellites were destroyed. These days, you blew up a nuclear weapon in that kind of location. You destroyed dozens of satellites, billions of dollars of damage. And people were able to see this thing for like thousands of. miles away. People on Fiji described the light show as breathtaking. Wow. I mean, so you mentioned that the radiation spread out much further than they had suspected. Did that negatively impact

Hawaiians? Did that hurt people on the island or did it not actually have too much of a human impact? It doesn't have very much of a human impact because fortunately we are under the atmosphere, which is a really thick blanket to protect ourselves from a lot of this radiation. And so really the only impact in Hawaii was the dramatic light show and the pulse from the EMP, which damaged some electrical devices and blew out streetlights and, you know, dumped a bunch of energy basically in any conductor that can absorb electromagnetic energy for hundreds of kilometers. And so satellites and street lights are basically the only real damage. There may also be some very small amounts of radioactive material, but it distributed over such a large area that I doubt has really any impact on it,

like, human life. Well, it could have gone worse. They could have been wronger. And actually, some scientists were wondering if this was going to have a long-lasting effect on other features of nearby space. Remember that near the Earth, there are these huge bands of radiation. They're called the Van Allen belts. And they're basically just particles like whizzing around the Earth. They were discovered in the 50s when we sent up our first space missions.

That as you leave the Earth, you pass through these bands of massive radiation. There's an inner belt and there's an outer belt. They're not very well understood. And at the time, they were seen as like an impediment to space travel, that if you go up into space, you have to survive passage through these basically radiation guns. And some scientists were wondering if we blow up a nuclear weapon in these radiation belts, maybe it would like disturb them or dissipate them. Though some people were sort of hopeful that it would blow up the radiation belts, which to me

is kind of crazy, it's like before you even really understand these things and their purpose and their benefits and their detriments, you want to just like blow them up and see what happens to life on Earth. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of looking forward and not looking at the current situation, right? Because you're thinking, like, let's make space travel easier. But we have this functional planet that we're pretty cozy on. So you might not want to mess that up for some kind of future space highway. I think that it is a lot of decisions that we make, we don't often think about, like,

but how will this impact the planet before we build this space highway or regular highway? Did it impact these radiation belts or did it not really have a permanent impact? It had basically no impact on the radiation belts which contained an enormous amount of energy which could not be affected by one nuclear bomb. But this nuclear explosion did have sort of shockwaves through the political climate on Earth. Things cooled down a little bit and in 1963 they passed a partial test ban treaty which prohibited all nuclear testing except for underground testing, which was seen as safer because it really is very well.

well contained. And so for about 30 years, the U.S. and the Soviet Union did a bunch of underground tests until they were prohibited in 1996. I still remember my dad traveling to the Nevada test site to participate in some of those tests. So the U.S. was still testing nuclear weapons into the 90s. We have not blown one up since then. The last nuclear test from the U.S. was in the 90s. It really feels like such a scary time, though, during the Cold War when you're having all these tests going on, you wonder about how many close calls we had in terms of a test going wrong where it actually hurts people or a test that happens that is misread by like, say, the Russians or, you know, by the U.S. and we think, oh, we're being attacked and that starts a whole

cascade of nukes. It feels like this Wild West time where we were just, I mean, maybe not playing around with nukes, but the fact we were doing so many of these tests and it feels, like we just kind of escaped some kind of horrible fate by the skin of our teeth. We certainly did. If you dig too deep into this history, it's terrifying. There were times when like a flock of seagulls were mistaken for the launch of a nuclear weapon. Another time when like a training tape was accidentally loaded into a computer, which became convinced that the Russians were attacking us. It's really terrifying how close we came to all-out nuclear war several times. And, you know, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R haven't tested nuclear weapons since the 90s.

But, you know, India and Pakistan detonated nuclear weapons in the very late 90s. And then, of course, North Korea has done tests fairly recently of nuclear weapons. So it's not like we're out of the woods in terms of nuclear weapons. Nope. Yeah, exactly. Israel actually is the only country we think has nuclear weapons but has never done a nuclear test that we know of. That we know of. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because.

at the start of the Russian-Ukraine war, I started following a bunch of nuclear proliferation experts and sort of people who understood the politics, who understood the science of nukes, because I was terrified. And I'm not going to say I got less terrified after hearing what the experts had to say. I think the knowledge of exactly the kind of circumstances

that we were in and stuff was helpful. Like even though the Cold War is over, over the fact that there are so many nukes out there, it's terrifying. So we should probably send them all the space, blow them all up, put them in space. I guess if I had to choose where to blow up nuclear bombs, so I'd probably choose to blow them up in space over the atmosphere or anywhere else on Earth. But it is really interesting to understand what happens to a nuclear bomb when you blow it up in space. It turns out to be quite different from what happens in our atmosphere.

It doesn't dump that energy and create a shockwave. It's basically like a little miniature sun. And so there is no shockwave to hurt you, but that radiation will travel much, much further and damage things that are much further away, especially electronics. So let's hope that we don't end up in a nuclear space war anytime soon. And if you're flying your spaceship and you want to fire some nukes, wear sunglasses. And be careful microwaving your soup and put a lid on your blender when you make that strawberry smoothie. All of this is practical advice.

Thanks, Katie, very much for joining us on this explosive episode. Thanks for having me. And thanks to all of our listeners. Tune in next time. Thanks for listening. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeart Radio. For more podcasts from IHeart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.

The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. terrorism. Listen to the new season of law and order criminal justice system on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe

her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy?

That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you. I'll take it all! I'm Mani. I'm Noah.

This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up.

Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. This is an IHeart podcast.