Going Deep with Chad and JT - Ep. 84 - Author Sam Kean Joins, WWII, Nuclear Warfare

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

What up stokers, in this very special episode, we are joined by renowned author Sam Kean to discuss his new book, The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb.  Prepare yourselves for science, history and full on stoke.  Buy the Book here.

oh diggity mama what up stokers of stoke nation this is chad kroger coming in with the going deep with chad and jt podcast i'm here with my compadre, John Thomas. What up? What's up, dog? Doing well. Boom, clap, stokers. We got an exciting episode today. I think so, yeah. We read a book again. Dude, I feel really good about that. Yeah, it is, you know, you feel like I'll walk around, I walk around with my shoulders a little bit more, a little bit wider, and I'm just like, I'm like, I know I could spit vocab at you. Yeah. Like I learned the word from this book, indignant and think. Yeah.

Dude, I learned the word riven, R-I-V-E-N. He ends, the last sentence of the book has that word in it. And I want to ask him like, how'd you pick that word? Yeah. Like was it the first one that came to you or did you cycle through some other options? Yeah. I also wonder if authors like are like writing

and they're like going through the thesaurus a lot or if that's just like they're just spouting off insane vocab i mean you know i think it's a little bit of both i think they're definitely just following their instincts and they got the words a lot of the time and then sometimes they're like you know what yeah time to go get basic and find that thesaurus.com dude i put the word indignant into my everyday vocab. I ordered McDonald's on Postmates. Love Postmates. Thank you for sponsoring us on the last episode. And the delivery guy was running two minutes behind.

And my girlfriend was like, are you okay? I'm like, I'm indignant. Nice, dude. How'd she like that? We made out. Yeah. That's awesome, man. It was awesome.

You guys are great. But yeah, we got an author on. He wrote a book, The Bastard Brigade, about World War II and the race to stop the Nazis from getting nuclear bombs. And yeah, I can't wait to chat it up with him. The book was big, actually 420 pages. We cooked right through it. We cooked right through it. We burned right through it.

Oh, legit. So, yeah, can we Skype him? Cool. His name is Sam Keen. What up, Aaron? So I guess we're going to look at this. Oh, yeah, we look over here. Hey.

Sam. Hello. How's it going? Hey. Good, how are you? Good, good. Doing good good well man thank you for doing the podcast dude we loved your book it was such a fun read thank you so much for writing it sam can we get a visual yeah hold on one second let me get this ready standby stokers we're're just going through some technical adjustments.

Dude, your book was amazing. Yeah, it was great. Swashbuckling and erudite at the same time. Wow, two fire words. Maybe he didn't hear that. I might have to tell him twice. Hey, what's up, man? Sam, what's up?

Okay. Can you hear me again? Yeah, we can hear you. How's it going? Good. How are you? Doing well. Good, good.

Well, Stokers, this is Sam Keen. Thank you so much for joining us. He wrote the book The Bastard Brigade, The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb. And we loved it, dude. I've been reading it for the past four days. And it's just a great read, guys.

Everyone check it out. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It was really riveting. I mean, because you set the stage so well with what the stakes are, which couldn't be any bigger. Can you kind of just explain the context of the story?

Yeah, so basically at the start of World War II, there were a bunch of scientists, a lot of Jewish scientists especially, who'd been run out of Germany. And they came over to the United States to work on our Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb. And basically, they were terrified that Germany was way ahead of us on atomic bomb research for various reasons. Uranium fission had been discovered there in the first place. They knew that they had really smart scientists working on atomic research there, like Werner Heisenberg and other Nobel Prize winners. And they knew that Germany had the best industry in the world. So you throw all those factors together, and then you add in the fact that it was Nazis running the country, were diabolical, were willing to use this weapon,

and they were terrified that the scientists there were going to basically build an atomic bomb, hand it to Hitler, and that he was going to destroy the world with it. So eventually, the Allies decided that what they had to do was they had to try to stop these German scientists. So they set up a few different missions to go over to Europe and to try to sabotage them, spy on them, and in some cases even try to assassinate members of the Nazi atomic bomb project. And the book is basically about those men and women and the adventures they had in running around Europe. Yeah, it's crazy. The stakes were so high. And in some of the stories, you know, these people, they went to such great lengths. And like the story of the saboteurs who, what's that power, the heavy water plant, the guys who.

The Fomarik power plant. Oh, man. Yeah, this was the most harrowing story I felt like. Yeah, basically there was an ingredient called heavy water. And in the book I explain a little bit more about what it was. But basically it's something that you'd use to study chain reactions, uranium reactions, things like that. And there was only one place in the world that made this stuff.

It was a place in Norway. And when Germany invaded Norway, conquered Norway, took it over, they controlled this plant. And this was intolerable. We couldn't let the Germans control this very vital resource. So basically they put together some missions where they decided to try to take this plant out. And the first mission they put together was a complete disaster.

A bunch of people died on it. Very sad, very destructive. But then they put together another mission where they sent in some commandos undercover. They basically had to break into this plant, sneak around, crawl through utility docks with the explosives, guns, equipment to take out this very specialized engineering equipment that was making this heavy water. And as you said, it's really one of the most riveting stories in the book and in fact in the

whole war to think about these few people going up against basically the most important part of the nazi atomic bomb project at that point yeah i mean they're fighting against nature and one of the things too is the uh one of the best details for me was the cyanide pill oh yeah they'd carry underneath their tongue is that correct that was in that mission right if they if they failed in order to not have to be interrogated they'd bite down the cyanide pill yeah there were a few different missions actually that involved that so there was this office called oss the office of strategic services which was kind of the precursor to the cia except much more kind of madcap and crazy and

poorly run but they developed what they called the L pill, which stood for lethal. And yeah, it was this little rubber cyanide pill that you could put in your mouth, you could hold it in your mouth, you could even swallow it, and you'd be okay, because it was coated with rubber. So it would go right through you, no problem. But if you were captured by someone, and you thought they might try to torture you and get secrets out, were supposed to bite down on this pill it would release cyanide into your mouth and you'd die right away so yeah that was one of the little tricks they had to uh keep them safe they thought what was crazy too is that like the first mission is a complete failure everyone dies and then the second one is successful but then the germans end up being able to still they rebuild the place

quickly so they're able to keep up uh heavy water production and there was so many missions in this where they kind of went bad and i was like i started to think of war as just like a lot of smart people making bad decisions like it seems like everyone in this book is like brilliant but like there's just so many fuck-ups in war. There are some pretty bad decisions. I mean I guess kind of the driving factor in the whole book over and over was just this looming fear of Adolf Hitler getting an atomic bomb. And that was so awful and so terrifying that they were willing to consider some pretty risky, pretty crazy mission. So I think that's a good way to put it is they had they had some really really smart people in there but this fear was kind of driving them and it drove them to make some kind of ridiculous decisions

in a lot of cases yeah it's crazy and uh i just think about the bravery of these guys like these missions and stuff like they were willing to you know uh give their whole lives and i uh like they want to do well so much that they're like they're not even thinking about their own well-being at all i don't i sometimes think like we're brave like if we go like we do city council meetings or like we did like a big radio show last week i'm like but i didn't take a cyanide pill in there in case it didn't go well. I'm like, that didn't go well, so see you guys. Yeah. Some of them would even write letters to their family members ahead of time before these missions

because they knew there was a very good chance they wouldn't come out of them. So, yeah, even going into these missions, they knew things could easily turn badly. And it seems like war has a way of revealing people's shortcomings. And it seems like war has a way of like revealing people's shortcomings. Like whatever someone's like personal weakness was, it like ended up manifesting itself. Like, like Werner Heisenberg, I hope I said that right.

The physicist, he's not an active combatant in the war, but like you, and he's a Nazi. He is a Nazi, right? Could I call him a Nazi? I guess he never joined the party,

but he was working for the military during the war so and and it kind of seems like he's doing it out of some kind of cowardice like he knows it's wrong but he'd rather keep his cushy life together so he's not going to like buck too much against whatever the new establishment is but he's not like but he's which is kind of cowardice but then he's not a coward because he runs into this house that's on fire to like save some people's lives he He just had this weakness with betraying Germany. Yeah, he sort of this skewed value system where, as you mentioned, there was one part where a neighbor's house started on fire and he basically climbed the walls outside, got this old man out of there, saved his life. I mean,

that's one of the hardest things someone could imagine doing, running into a burning building to save someone. But at the same time, he was working for the Nazis, developing atomic technology, things like that. I think it sort of shows a weakness of him in that he kind of put science above everything else. And he kind of thought that as long as he was doing pure science, it was okay, that there was nothing wrong with science, never really thought through the consequences as much. And even more than that, he kind of thought that, you know, he was so brilliant that once he had this technology, maybe he'd have a bit of a bargaining chip and then he could sit down with Hitler and Goring and others and kind of talk them through and make them see reason and things like that. He was just sort of like dangerously naive about some of the consequences

of the work that he was doing. So brilliant on the one hand in this kind of narrow field, but not so brilliant in sort of everyday political realities. What do you think about the idea, we were talking about this when we were reading the book, about scientists who basically with Heisenberg, know you're saying that he just as long as he's it's pure science for him he's not worrying about the political implications or anything like that what do you think about that whole philosophy of like we shouldn't like separating the art from the artist exactly yeah it's tough i think for. I think in most cases it probably does make sense and it's okay. But there are some technologies, biotechnologies, the one nowadays that really pops to mind, where you just can't be that naive.

You just can't sort of close, put blinders on and pretend like it doesn't have some sort of effect in society. So there are a lot of cases where your science doesn't really some sort of effect in society. So there are a lot of cases where your science doesn't really make that much of a difference. You can do astronomy. You can just do pure science. And it's probably not going to be that big of a deal or have that big of an impact or moral impact on society. But there are other cases where it's going to. So I do support that idea for the most part. But again, there are cases where it just doesn't make sense. Was he allowed back into the scientific community

post-war or was there always kind of like a scarlet letter on him? A bit of a scarlet letter. There were a lot of people who broke with him, were very mad with him and never wanted to be friends with him again. Did he get it? Some people resumed a sort of personal relationship with him. But there were friendships that were broken by that. And he always kind of had this stigma on him. I think his reputation has been whitewashed a bit a little in the years since his death. People have sort of forgotten about that aspect of it. But at the time, especially, there were a lot of people still very angry with him. What about, we got to talk about the Kennedys, because they feature heavily in the book.

And it's interesting because you've got stuff about the Kennedys in there. And then I realized it's like doubly impactful because they played a part in World War II. But then also John F. Kennedy was the president closest to the brink of nuclear war. So there's kind of like a consistent thread there. But yeah, that was something I thought of. But thank you, Doug. But can you talk a little bit about the Kennedys and their dad's role in the initial part of the war with appeasement and then how the boys kind of had

to pay the price to, although maybe not knowingly to, to save their family name? Yeah. So with the Kennedys, basically the, uh, thread of the book starts with their father,

Joseph Kennedy, who was ambassador to great Britain. And Kennedy for various reasons was terrified by the Nazis. He was convinced they were going to overrun Europe. There was nothing anyone could do to stop them. And that basically what we had to do was appease them, get out of their way, do whatever we could to try to just make it so they didn't conquer the rest of the world. And a lot of people in the United States actually kind of supported that idea. They didn't want to intervene in World War II. FDR, President Roosevelt, did not support that idea and was very angry with Kennedy about this.

And in fact, eventually sort of fired him over this. Yeah, they had to get him out of there. He came back to the United States. And he ended up sort of disgracefully coming back. And there were a lot of people in the press and a lot of people in the government who really did not like Joseph Kennedy after that. They were very angry with him. And so the family had kind of this stink on them, that they were appeasers, that they were defeatists. And the sons were kind of acutely aware of this reputation that they had.

And during the war, the two oldest ones, Joseph Jr. and JFK, John, the future president, both joined the war. And they did this because a lot of people in their generation would. But Joe, especially Joe Jr., was adamant that he wanted to get elected to political office someday. And he thought that joining the war would make him a hero and that it would give him a leg up getting elected. And this was a pretty good plan, except what happened was his little brother, JFK, ended up upstaging him. JFK ended up becoming the big war hero for some things he did in the South Pacific, rescuing some people, rallying them, saving their lives. He dragged a guy by his teeth. He had articles written about him, newspaper articles.

He was basically one of the brightest young stars of the war. And this whole thing infuriated Joe Jr. He was so mad that it was his kid brother getting all of this attention. So what he decided to do was he decided he needed to turn the spotlight back onto himself and start volunteering for really dangerous missions in order to become a war hero on his own merits and then upstage his little brother. And eventually, one of the missions he volunteered for was to try to wipe out these bunkers in northern France that they thought contained atomic weapons.

And that's the mission he kind of gets wrapped up in, and that's where the book goes, following him on these missions. Yeah, it's a crazy sibling rivalry rivalry and then the stakes are so high because it's with war you know so like with jack jr one of my favorite parts of the book is like you know he's this big war hero and everyone's celebrating him and his brother joe's just crying by himself he's just like yeah there was a there was a party where someone like saluted jfk and they're like you know he's a hero jfk and joe stomped away and someone a family friend later found him like bawling yeah in his room stupid fucking hero dude anybody could drag a guy by his life best by your teeth it's not that hard dude

yeah he goes to such drastic lengths he's like i'll do anything like right he goes into this final mission and people are warning him they're like dude the electronic system looks a little bit flaky and he's like it's all good dude no worries yeah i'm good there were some missions he volunteered for without even knowing what it was they just said they came in and they're like we need someone to do a dangerous mission he's like me me i'll do that yeah that sounds good i really respected it yeah i respect his competitive i mean i know it's come i know there's like a narcissistic like a narcissistic motivation, but like he doesn't have to put himself out there. He probably could have got out of like troublesome areas because of his dad. And he's just like, no, no, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to be a hero. You're right. It was very brave of him. He, I think I mentioned in the book, he stayed on well after the number of missions that he needed to fly home and then volunteered for dangerous missions after that so he was personally very very brave you're right about that a coward he was not yeah um so if uh if they had failed uh in their mission and hitler had gotten the atomic bomb how do you think it would have played out like because i'm watching man in the high castle so i'm kind of that's that show sort of depicts what would have happened.

But do you think they would have just won the war immediately? It depends a little bit on when it happened. Had things broken right for them, had they had the economic ability to make it, had all those things come together, and they'd gotten Hitler an atomic bomb. If he had had it at the beginning of the war he would have basically destroyed everyone he would have been able to wipe out england with it would have kept everyone else away would have destroyed the soviet union so that would have been bad bad news and they you know there still might be a third reich today uh ruling europe had he gotten later in the war he probably would have been able to drive us back

after d-day kind of consolidate their gains and sort of stick with what they had so i think had they gotten it later in the war we probably would not have been able to defeat them and there might still be remnants of it today but they were weakened a little bit at that point where i don't think they maybe could have gone on the offensive as much. But it's kind of an open question. There would have been like three players in the Cold War. So why do you think we beat them in the race for the atomic bomb? A couple of reasons. I think the big reason was that there was a country, the United States, that was involved in this that was not having to face battles on its home territory.

So we could basically devote a huge part of our economy to building an atomic bomb. Niels Bohr sort of famously said once that an atomic bomb would be impossible because you'd have to turn your entire country into a factory in order to make an atomic bomb. And he was right that you would have to do this. And that's almost what the United States did. Because when you look at our Manhattan project, there were tens of thousands of people working on it. And we ended up spending something like $2 billion in 1945 money on the atomic bomb. So we were, I guess, had the luxury, basically, that war wasn't taking place here, and that we had enough extra resources we could put toward it. Whereas Germany was kind

of struggling. They were fighting a war on their home territory by the end, and they didn't really have the money they could put toward it in the same way that we could. Yeah, we were in Los Alamos, New Mexico, just safely chilling. Yeah, dude, that was that was one of the most interesting parts about the book, too, is that when you read about war stories, or you watch them, it's almost always about the people in the war, you know what I mean? Or the politicians who are sending people to stuff. But because you're following scientists and stuff, we get to see how like normal people kind of live during the war. And like, they're still traveling, like, you know, holidays still matter. Like it's

a, it was weird to me to see how normal, like, I mean, it was still weird. You had to have like extra paperwork and stuff, but people were still traveling and like visiting people and like doing things that you wouldn't expect in wartime. Yeah. That was one of the things I wanted to do in the book was to show you how it affected maybe normal everyday people. Some of the people who went were kind of frankly cowards. They didn't want to go to war. They were scared about going to war, but they felt they had kind of a higher calling and a higher duty, and so they went anyway. And, you know, we talked about someone like Joseph Kennedy, very, very brave, but someone like Samuel Goudschmidt, one of the scientists I talked about, did not want to go to the war and was terrified to go.

But it's nice to see that side of it as well and to realize that war kind of involved all sorts of different people. And you sort of saw this side of humanity where, especially when you're talking about in Spain, how people, they still have this desire to celebrate and, you know, try and live their lives as best they could regardless of the circumstances surrounding them yeah in spain so when joseph kennedy kind of snuck there and people were you know going to the theater every night because they had nothing else to do or just trying to live a normal everyday life kind of salvage something of their old lives so yeah you kind of see that aspect of the war too the behind the scenes stuff yeah that was cool um there's so much detail in this book i was just wondering how long did it take to research um it was about two to two and a half years of doing the research and the writing so that was you know going to archives, going to libraries, looking up unpublished letters, manuscripts, things like that, consulting academic papers, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff.

So about a year and a half to two years of that and then another year or so of absorbing it, writing it, polishing it, stuff like that. So two and a half years total for the process where do you find details like about the the groups that went to uh blow up the water plant or uh like dialogue between joe and his like uh superiors like where does that is that from journals like is that from where does that stuff come from different sources so there are letters at like the jfk library in boston that have some of this information uh there were older books, you know, that had interviews with people who were around and alive then. There are reports and things, so daily dispatches from his unit, stuff like that, that contain a lot of these details. So it's really piecing together a lot of different information and then trying to, I guess, sort of polish it and present it as a something a little

more readable like a narrative yeah and what inspired you to write about this story like did you hear did it was something you've always known about and you just wanted to go in further or uh did you hear a specific tale and that was sort of what this was the spark that sort of started a little bit of both in that so i've written uh four other books and each one of them looks at science and science history things like the periodic table the human brain stuff like that but i was actually a physics major in college and i loved physics it was really a cool subject for me but i'd never written a book about physics mostly because i didn't have the story that i really wanted to sink my teeth into in the way that I had with the other ones.

So I was kind of on the lookout for a physics-type story. And I did like atomic research, stuff like that. And then one of the characters was in fact the spark for it when I heard about Moe Berg, the baseball player in the book. And he was the one I said, wow, you know, I've never heard about this guy before. I wanted to look into it. And then I realized that there was a whole bigger backstory involving not just Moe Berg, but a bunch of other people like the Kennedy brothers, scientists, Nobel Prize winners, stuff like that. And I just realized that no one had kind of pulled all of these threads together and really told the story from the American's point of view

about how terrified they were and all these crazy missions they went on. So it's a bit of a combination of looking for that subject and then just really falling in love with some of the characters. Dude, physicists are interesting. I had no idea they were so, but it makes sense that they were so worried about their rep within the community. And you have all these like brilliant scientists who are making these blunders in their research. And then they're like the laughingstock of the community for like a year or two. And then they're like, all right, I got to bounce back this year and get the Nobel Prize. And it's crazy. And then a lot of them accomplish that. They come back and they drill it the next time. You're like, all right, this is everything's kind of hit and miss, I guess, even for scientists.

Yeah, there is a bit of macho-ness, I think, among physicists especially, where they really have an arrogance about them, where they consider themselves kind of at the peak of the scientific world. And for them, the downside of that is that when they make a blunder, a scientific blunder, it's like everything crashes down on them. So yeah, that's a good point. It's an interesting aspect of the sort of uh the sociology of physicists i can't believe how bummed i'd be if i was the joe lee curies the a married couple who are physicists and they come from a long line of physicists and then um they just they discovered the neutron and just didn't realize it and then someone else beat them to it

and you're like yes that was just and then they blundered with another big discovery too. So they were the ones especially who just kept making these mistakes that just – in retrospect, it's so agonizing to see how close they are. And then someone else gets credit for something like that. So yeah, I mean especially if like Irene Juliet Curie, Marie Curie's daughter is one of the big characters in the book. And she had so much pressure on her coming from marie who won two nobels her father won a nobel i mean and then to blunder with these discoveries was really really tough on her i read in the book you say that uh neutrons travel at 10 000 miles per second is that how do they measure that yes i came in i came in like it's like inconceivable to me my well what they probably do is they know the mass of them quite well and then they can

how would they i'm trying to think how they would have done it back then what they probably did is they probably measured the energy of it and then they knew the mass of it and then from that you can sort of back calculate and figure out what the velocity would have been of it so i'm not sure exactly what they would have done back then but my guess was that they used the energy and then back calculated with that and what does it mean to bombard something with neutrons like how does that process happen like what's the stuff they actually use to bombard it with and what so it depends on on what exactly they're doing but they would basically get a radioactive material and they would put it with another material and then the radioactive material would fly in it would hit

the other material and then it would basically knock neutrons loose and how do they make them hit just by like putting them in the same bowl and like heating it up or like? You don't have to heat it up. You just put them together and that is enough. So basically what they would have had to do is they would have probably taken something like a sample of uranium and then they would have refined it. So they would have, you know, boiled it down, done chemical experiments on it, whatever, to isolate certain elements in there like radium, which is a rare element, but very highly radioactive. So chemically, you isolate the radium, and then you put it with another material that when it knocks into it, again, it would release neutrons. And then often what they did is they took a little lead mold

and they drilled a very very tiny hole in it put this radium with the other material in the center of it and then the neutrons would be able to fly out that very thin pinprick hole they had drilled in there and then they kind of direct the neutrons where they wanted to send it because the hole was the only place they could go so basically the work of it is to get the radium or whatever, and then you just put it in something and then kind of direct the neutrons where you want it to go. Wow. That makes sense.

It does, but it was really hard for me, but I think I got it. Yeah, I do. Okay. And then radioactive, I was sort of interested to learn about, because you always hear about it, you're like, oh, it's radioactive. But what exactly does that mean if something's radioactive? If it's radioactive, that just means that it's unstable, that it's going to decay. So atoms have a few different parts of them.

One part is the nucleus in the center. atoms have a few different parts of them one part is the nucleus in the center and if an atom is radioactive that nucleus is going to decay or disintegrate in some way there's lots of different details about ways it can disintegrate ways it didn't can decay stuff like that but radioactive basically means that it's going to decay at some point it's going to fall apart and so radioactive poisoning that's when you're sort of bombarded with neutrons or is that correct it can depend it can be neutrons it can be uh what are called beta particles it can be alpha particles but neutrons can kill you pretty easily yeah so you can either poison someone like you know the notorious like chernobyl sort of situation where you walk into a reactor core that's melting

and you get bombarded with things okay but there was also that case with the russian spy in london a few years ago where they actually put radioactive material in his tea and he drank it and it got inside him and it killed him from the inside out so chernobyl situations outside in this one is inside out so it can get you a few different ways depending on how bad they want to be which do you think is worse inside out oh boy i mean it's bad either way uh i don't it's gonna be bad either way yeah i don't think i don't think you really say which one's worse like oh fuck dude that was not Earl Grey. Did you dose my tea with radioactive materials?

You motherfucker. Are these isotopes? I really love the language of the book. Like you're a really beautiful writer. But you end the book with, at every step the men and women involved believed they were doing the right thing. But in splitting the atom, they'd riven the world. How did you come up with,

was the word riven the first one you wrote, or did you, how did you come to use that word, or decide to use that word? Riven. Well, I don't remember. I think I wanted to end it on something that was kind of trying to speak to, I guess,

where the world was going at that point, because the Cold War was going to be descended, so, going to be descending. So we had just finished this great war. But it's a bit of an ambiguous ending in that we had, you know, the Nazis did not get the bomb. So that was good. But the bomb was suddenly there. So we were entering a much more dangerous situation. And especially with a lot of people involved in this book, they were heroes in a lot of ways. They did a lot of heroic things. But in some ways, these missions ruined their lives

or the war in general kind of ruined their lives and they ended up not being very happy and fulfilled afterward. So I wanted to kind of, I guess, get at that bit of ambiguity about how they'd been successes on the one hand but on the other hand they deal they did still have to kind of deal with the consequences afterward and the issue is ongoing like we still have nukes everywhere or now we still have nukes everywhere there are in modern times uh nuclear scientists who've been assassinated for working on projects things like that so these issues and the morality and

the morals we're facing, the ethics of all this is still with us today. Yeah. Yeah. It is really scary to think that we, you know, our country, Russia, Iran, everyone has nukes just ready to go. So it's kind of like we're at a sort of a standoff. Yeah. If you have a leader in one of those places who's not worried about the world, they're going to inherit, like they might just throw down. Yeah, it's one of those things where we thankfully now are living in a bit of a lull where things do feel a little safer. But as long as they are there, they are dangerous. And there is always the threat that they are going to be used. So yeah, there are people, people there. I mean, still a big worry in the world today.

Yeah. And there's no sort of you can't just say like, all right, we're going to get rid of them because then there's the – I mean, the technology is still there. It exists. There's a risk of someone just saying, no, I'm going to keep my nukes and then they – Yeah. Yeah, there's the danger of somebody cheating essentially. essentially. One thing I do, I don't know how much I went into this in the book, but it is something I've kind of thought about and talked about when I've been giving talks about it, is that, you know, it was a big risk for the United States to take on the Manhattan Project. We spent a lot of money on it, spent a lot of resources on it, and there was really no guarantee

at the beginning it was going to work. In fact, a lot of people doubted that it would have worked. And the only reason we pushed so much money into it and that scientists worked so hard was that they did really fear Adolf Hitler getting the bomb. And there was this constant refrain of, we need to beat him, we need to beat him. And if that fear had not been kind of looming over their heads, I'm not sure that they would have risked so much money and put so much effort into it. And then's conceivable considering you know the soviet union basically copied our bombs spies took our plans and helped them make their bombs it's conceivable that we wouldn't have atomic weapons today had they not pushed so hard during world war ii so we could live in a very different world had the events i described in the book not played out the way they did. That escalation, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to think about a world without nukes.

Yeah, I heard a quote that the Apollo moon landing was communism's greatest triumph, and I think that kind of ties into what you're saying, where it's like, the enemy is what motivates us to beat the enemy, and that's what kind of creates all this innovation in a way. Yeah, there's definitely truth to that. to beat the enemy. And that's what kind of creates all this innovation in a way. Yeah. There's definitely truth to that. Yeah. It's pretty astounding when you read the book to think of how much effort and

how much, uh, how many, how many resources, how much time and, and all these minds were, it was all poured into military strategy and sort of developing all this stuff.

And it's like, man, if you guys just place this somewhere else, we could, you know, nobody would be hungry or something like that yeah yeah you know it's just like there's it's like 80 of like all the efforts are going towards you know developing this stuff when it's like you know it's just crazy to think about the manpower that they utilized you know but i'm just that's just a comment, I guess. No, I dig it.

It's crazy. But I worry about that. I'm like, are we spending too much on the military? Not that I know what the right call is, but then I'm like, well, if the people in charge think we need to spend that much on the military, maybe they're right.

Maybe having a strong offense is the best defense. Yeah. I mean, it's still true today. You have people debating about different aspects, different government programs. Should we be funding a NASA trip to the moon, stuff like that? But that part of the budget that they're debating is actually a very tiny overall slice of the budget where something like the military, if you look at the actual spending, is still a gigantic part of our budget. It's the majority, right? So these kind of issues are still with us, still relevant today. What's your favorite movie that has nukes in it? Favorite movie that has nukes in it?

Huh. I'm trying to think of any one that kind of features nukes that I have. Do you have a favorite one? Is this why it sort of popped into your mind? I do have one ready, Broken Arrow with John Travolta and Christian Slater. I also just think that's a cool name, Broken Arrow. I'm going to go with Some of All Fears.

Nice, dude. Ben Affleck, Jack Ryan. Yeah, 24 with Kiefer. Oh, nice. I think, yeah, he... Okay. And then there's Batman, the third Batman, they have a nuke. Oh, yeah, yeah, Dark Knight Rises. Yeah. Dirty Bomb dirty bomb okay i don't

know if this was a favorite movie of mine but i did get a kick out of i can't remember what was it armageddon where they send they're going after the asteroid and they put it there yeah dude you're tugging on our heartstrings it's a fun idea and it's nice that they're using a nuke on an asteroid no one's really gonna be like oh bummer yeah i mean the the consequences on anything anything yeah yeah that's one of the times i'm not hurting anybody except for harry yeah i was stoked on nukes then i was like thank you thank you nukes for uh saving ben affleck i ask everybody on the pod this who do you think is the smartest person that's ever lived smartest person that's ever lived. Oh, boy. The one that pops into my head, it's probably a little biased because I'm a scientist.

But I've always been partial to Isaac Newton. I think he's a really interesting character, not only for the science that he did, but he was a bit of a – he was a bit of a, I guess, religious nut as well, but really a formidable, very smart person. And to think about all the work he was doing basically by himself at a time when he didn't really have anyone at his level, I think he really stands out as someone very, very brilliant to me. Isaac Newton's a very common one. Yeah, people have been saying him. Who else have you gotten?

Anyone really unexpected? No, everyone's basically said scientists. We've floated the idea of some authors and stuff. Like Shakespeare. Yeah, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, and people definitely nod their head, but I think for the most part, people have gone with the scientists.

The scientists route, okay. Yeah. Have you always had an affinity, because I know you started started with science i read on your website that you sort of from a young age you were always interested in science like i said you were taking mercury out of thermometers is that correct this this was okay so what happened was i was clumsy and i talked to myself a lot so my mom would put the thermometer under my tongue and and I would bungle it, and it would fall, and it would break. But my mom was really cool about it. She would gather up the mercury and let us play with it.

So I just thought it was the most amazing stuff I'd ever seen. So we ended up having a nice collection of mercury. And then for my first book, the periodic table book, it's called The Disappearing Spoon. So the premise is to find a funny or weird story about every single element on the table. And that's the story I tell about mercury, about how I would break these thermometers and how I would enjoy them, things like that. Where did you grow up? So, yeah, I did really have kind of a love of science.

And for a long time, I was convinced I was going to be a scientist because I just really enjoyed that kind of work. I really enjoyed learning about the natural world, stuff like that. But I just – like I got to college and it just didn't feel like the right fit anymore in that I just didn't enjoy being in labs for so many hours. I mean, again, I was kind of clumsy with the equipment. It never worked right, worked the way I wanted to. And for the first time, I kind of thought, you know, maybe I don't want to be a scientist. So I ended up getting an English major kind of on top of that. And eventually, sort of stupidly long, it took to realize that I could write about science. I could actually combine the two. But once I got that and kind of got on that path, it really was a good path for me because I do love the science.

I just don't want to be in the lab necessarily all the time doing it. Where did you go to college? University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Oh, Gophers? Yep. You guys always have a good running game, especially in the early aughts. We did for a while. Are you a Big Ten guy?

Is that how you know this? I was just a huge college football fan. So when you guys had Marion Barber and Lawrence Maroney, I was like, dude, this is a hell of a backfield. Yes. What was going to school there like? It was fun. It was a very, very big school. So that was bad in some ways.

It was almost kind of dauntingly big. bad in some ways like it was almost kind of dauntingly big um but it was great in that there were so many classes on so many different subjects that i could take classes on whatever i wanted basically so i really like that variety and being able to go there and you know do whatever i wanted essentially as far as academics were concerned did you hit beer bongs and et cetera. Et cetera. There was some of that too, yeah. It was a good school for that. Nice.

I love the beer bong. Yeah, it's really fun. I don't do it as much now, but I had a time where that was the only way I drank. There's something about the beer bong too that whenever I look at it, I sort of think of science. Yeah. This looks like it was conceived in a lab. There's a valve, a funnel, a substance. It is pretty amazing the amount of ingenuity that goes into some of beer bongs and other types of bongs

and how much ingenuity that really has gone into those kind of things. I'm always very impressed with those. Yeah, the Mount Chugmore, which, guys, you can find on Amazon, is a four-hose beer bong. With careful engineering, you can fit more than one beverage in there, and the valves are just, you know, I forget the word that they use. Reliable? Reliable, but it's something much more sophisticated.

And I think it merits, like the Mount Chugmore merits that word, so I'm bummed I can't remember it. Well, we'll definitely put an addendum at the end of the podcast with the word. For sure. Do you think, is there top scientists going into those fields or do you think for the most part those are like the dregs of the class i don't think it's the dregs i just think they probably have different priorities i think they uh yeah i mean they're just using their cleverness for extracurricular activities i think it's a good way to put it for sure for sure is is there a lot of like citizen scientists now like so many things

going on like um like my psychiatrist was talking about how like a lot of the best people on diet right and he's like a traditional doctor like he doesn't seem like someone who'd be into these like outside the mainstream thinkers but he was like no, like a lot of these citizens, scientists, and doctors are making some of the groundbreaking realizations. Do you kind of see that happening or where do you fall in that? Yeah, it depends a little bit on the fields, but there are a lot of them where citizens, like everyday people, can contribute a lot.

Things like near-Earth astronomy. So you're looking at things in low orbit, tracking asteroids, stuff like that. They do a lot of work on that. A lot of conservation work, so tracking where species are, where they're appearing where they hadn't before, where they're not appearing anymore. They rely kind of heavily on citizens for that. Genetics nowadays is getting to the point where you can do some of that work on your own. This happened maybe a decade or so now, but there were a few even high school students, they were going into fancy sushi restaurants and taking DNA from samples of supposedly very

high-end fish being served at these restaurants and showing that actually they were swapping in pretty lowbrow chum that they were giving people. And people, I guess, couldn't tell the difference. But even something like that, genetics, which traditionally was a pretty high-end science, it's really reaching down and a lot of everyday people have the tools available to them now. Do you think that's because of the internet? Because there's so much knowledge that's readily available? And also it sort of allows for a little bit more free thinking like there isn't any sort of financial

influence behind it so they can sort of take whatever route they want does that make sense the internet is part of it definitely the dissemination of information uh with genetics specifically we have just the technology is kind of um – you hear about Moore's Law, about them fitting more and more transistors, and they keep getting smaller. The same sort of dynamics have been at play with genetic sequencers as well, where they just keep getting better and better exponentially year after year. So they're just getting better, cheaper, faster, and people now have access to them. You can go out and buy a genetic sequencer for a modest amount of money nowadays whereas before that would have cost you millions and millions of dollars so same kind of dynamics that have allowed the internet to come about but it's more than just

the internet i think yeah where do you live now i live in washington dc right now i love dc we went there about a year and a half ago. I love the feel of it. It's a good vibe, yeah. The people are brusque, though. They're walking with a purpose. Oh, for sure. They're not ambling like us California folk.

It's East Coast, so yeah, that happens. And are you from Minnesota? I am not. I'm from South Dakota, right next door. Oh, cool. Is that Rushmore? Yeah. Was South Dakota fun? Or were you always like, I'm going to move right next door. Oh cool. Is that Rushmore? Yeah it's South Dakota. Was South Dakota fun or were you always like I'm gonna move to a big city? It was fun. It was a great

place to grow up. It was very kind of open, very safe. I really enjoyed it. I kind of felt like a big fish in a small pond in a lot of ways and that my high school was pretty modest sized. So I got to do the science that I liked, but I also got to run a lot, run track cross country. I got to be in plays and different things like that. So I really enjoyed that I had that variety and freedom. So it was a very nice place to grow up. I have very fond memories of South Dakota. Cool. And so how do you keep your mind sharp to write all the time? Do you meditate or do you work out a lot? Do you keep a clean diet or do you just have – or none of that? I do work out a lot and I do try to eat healthy. Those are probably the biggest things. I don't – I never really got into meditation. This wasn't my thing. I was more always kind of active, kind of going out running, working out, doing things like that. So that's probably what helps keep me sharp. always kind of active, kind of going out running, working out, doing things like that. So that's probably what helps keep me sharp. Do you have any advice to our audience for any aspiring writers out there sort of or how they can sort of take the steps to move in that direction?

I think the biggest thing I would tell anyone who wants to write is that the most important thing is to sit down and just start doing it. And that writing is a bit of a volume game in that it's something you just have to put in practice, like you were playing a sport or playing a musical instrument. And I think there's a misconception that you sit around and kind of wait for inspiration to strike. And then at that point,

you hurry and you write everything down. Where I think as what actually happens is that you have to put in the practice, develop the skills, so that when inspiration does strike you you have the ability to capture what you're actually thinking so you do need to just put in the time put in the practice and i would say the most important thing is just to sit down and make sure that you're doing it on a daily basis so just put in the time i think yeah easy advice but it's hard to do yeah i think super hard i think it on a daily basis so just put in the time i think yeah easy advice but it's hard to do yeah i think super hard i think it's a common misconception with with art and all kinds

of stuff like that it's like you just wait for it to come and then the the inspiration or the you know the brilliant idea and then you'll have it and it's like uh i found with our stuff like we do comedy it's you just do it every day and then you your chances of striking gold are much more common. And you just trust that people will forget the crappy ones and remember the good ones. Yeah. Yeah. There was a famous scientist, Linus Pauling, who won a Nobel – he actually won two Nobel

Prizes. Very brilliant. And they asked him, you know, how do you have so many good ideas? And he said, well, the key is to have lots of ideas, then you just throw the crappy ones out. And as you said, no one remembers those. They just remember the good ideas. Yeah.

Cool. Do you dabble in any drugs or anything, or do you keep it pretty clean? A little bit. Nice. I guess alcohol is the one that I have sort of gravitated toward. So I do enjoy having a tipple. And a little bit in drugs, not too much. I've never done anything hardcore.

Do you do that to help with the creative process, or is that more just for fun and blowing off steam and stuff? Just fun and blowing off steam. I don't know if it would help my creative process or not. I'm not sure about that. Maybe it would. I've never really tried it. I would creative process or not. I'm not sure about that. Maybe it would. I've never really tried it. I would.

Like, I've never really been interested in the hard drugs. I've never really tried them. But I've always thought it would be fun to try LSD just because people have said, you know, it kind of opens up your mind and, you know, you'd see the world in a different way. So that's the one I've always been kind of curious about at least. And are there scientists who do that? I guess Richard Feynman, he was a drug guy right not exclusively like he did other stuff as well but he did dabble in that area often i think he did a little bit i'm not remembering the details but i think he did a little bit he was kind of of that of that time where they were doing that and then

of course it was like you know timothy leary and the famous ones who were really dabbling quite heavily. Yeah, dude, I read the book about their Harvard psychedelic club with him and Richard Alpert, who became Ram Dass. And I was like, dude, this doesn't read like a science experiment. This reads like an orgy that a couple of really smart guys are heading. Yeah. And then like Timothy Leary got mad at Richard Alpert because he thought he was trying to hug up with his son. And like I was like, man, there's some boundary issues in this whole this world. And then Timothy Leary got mad at Richard Albert because he thought he was trying to hug up with his son. And I was like, man, there's some boundary issues in this whole world.

That was the 60s, yep. I tried to drink red wine and write one time, but I just ended up watching American Hustle. Oh, that sounds like a nice night, though. Maybe that's what you needed. It was nice. I think the red wine made me gravitate towards David O. Russell, which is legit. Yeah, he's

skimpy on plot but i mean those characters are robust oh for sure yeah for sure did you actually get anything written down do i've tried it a couple times uh and it's just nonsense uh but but whenever i'm doing it or i'll be like i'll write notes on my phone you know so if i'm out at a bar with friends and they're like we're like just hammering some bud lights you know i'll be like i'll write notes on my phone you know so if i'm out at a bar with friends and they're like we're like just hammering some bud lights you know i'll be like oh this is funny and then i'll but usually it's the sober thoughts that usually end up being the gold right yeah you look back and you're like oh that was really funny at the time not so much in the sober light of day yeah yeah i would need the energy i had when i was inebriated to make this work, and I just don't have it right now.

I'll have a note like, eat a burrito, and I'm like, that's not a joke. Maybe I just need more Bud Light, but I'll figure it out someday. You for sure will. I'll do that. Thank you. It's dialed in. Should we hit some questions? Yeah.

Do you want to answer some questions with us from the Stokers? I am happy to answer some questions. Sure. All right. Sweet. All right. Up first. What up, guys?

So before I ask my question, I'm going to give some background information. I started dating this girl two years ago. It didn't work out, and she still follows me on social media, and I stopped following her. She got a new guy who she's still dating to this day. I've dated a few girls since, and she always initiates following my new girl on social media what should i do about this i've thought about crafting up a message to send to her but i'm unsure what to say thanks for the help in advance i look here i look forward to hearing back from y'all on the podcast dude i think uh i think this guy just wants to reach out to his ex i don't think it's necessary

to to say anything to her my actual thought was't think it's necessary to say anything to her. My initial thought was like, let it go. Yeah, just let her be as she wants. Yeah, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Why let it bother you? Yeah. Unless he's trying to, although she's taken now, right? She's in a relationship.

Yeah, he's got to let that one go. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, she's probably being competitive. All right. I'd like to remain anonymous for this particular question chad and jt i'm in dire need of some help i've been happily dating the love of my life for a little over a year now we're going to our final year of college and looking forward

to building a life together sounds great right yep well here's the problem my sweet gf's not so sweet sister has just moved in with her to begin her own college journey she's extremely immature which is somewhat expected as she is a freshman but she also seems to have embarked on a quest to bang all my friends not something i expected whatsoever my stoke levels have been extremely low lately due to the fact that all my friends are perfectly fine with this and act like it's normal i've lost at least one bro so far due to this situation and i'd rather not lose more me and the girlfriend have accepted that we cannot control what these adults in parentheses do so we So I guess my question is this. Do you think that some lines were crossed here? I'd love some advice on how to cope with this situation.

Wow. I would say yes. It seems like some lines have been crossed. It's not clear, I guess, has the girlfriend talked to her about it? It sounds like the girlfriend's not on board with this so much. But boy, I guess I don't know what you can do if you've already talked to her about it. And she's not respecting that other than kind of waited out. But that's not really great advice, I feel like.

Yeah, I don't think there's much he can do. I yeah he can he's just gotta sort of let it go I think you have the girlfriend talk to the sister yeah and say like hey like just maybe be a little more judicious because like it's just well I don't know but then you're like shaming her or something I don't know that's the move I leave it up to the sister to handle it with her sister then you just talk to your bros but it must suck though it's like you want to complain to them about her because he doesn't like her. And then they're all like,

no, I think she's pretty cool. You're like, oh, okay. Not a lot of loyalty. You could look on the bright side here and just be like, you know what? I have the chance of one of my bros. It could be a good bond. One of the bros starts dating the sister.

Oh, that's a good point. But I don't think he likes the sister. That's a full squad. Yeah. Oh, she's too immature? I think she's too immature, so he doesn't like her. She's a freshman. Give her time.

She's got to blow off that steam. Give her time. Yeah, that's what it is. Give her time. She might be cool by sophomore year. Yeah. She's just figuring herself out. She's brand new to college, so she's trying stuff.

But I think she'll come around the other side. Or she won't, and you're stuck, and's gonna blow but we're gonna be optimistic i'd say surrender to the situation good call dude that's my thought yep what's up yeah i don't think there's much to do what's up my dear associates in the work of stoke so i've got a sitch i'm in a band with two good friends one of which is a fellow stoker and has been a best friend of mine for a long time. Thing is, I just got married and I feel like I'm being separated from him and our drummer. Not a boking of sorts. A boke is a word we use to say when you kick someone out of the friend group who's typically a schmole.

A schmole is a friend that nobody really likes. Thing is, I just got married and I feel like I'm being, but I don't get invited to things with them besides band practice and shows and the occasional skate sesh. I get it when they're chasing tail for them to leave me out, but how can I clarify that I'm still down to do stuff and want to hang with the squad even if I'm married? Maybe Aaron, sound guy, in and out hater,

has some advice. Our sound guy, Aaron, he's legit. All right. Also, if you listen to our band that we're dope, we're called The Moss and we're on Instagram as The Moss Band. We'll check you guys out aaron what's up dog first of all not a fan of the band named moss oh sorry just being a character lays down the hammer dude i love it sorry just being a good podcast i mean it's just that's just how it kind of goes man you're when

you have kids it's gonna be the same thing like you're you're gonna lose the friends that are married but don't have kids and you're gonna get you're gonna get kid friends so i think it's just it's just kind of the nature of life uh but be glad you're still in the band and you're not from the band yeah i love that perspective dude that was a nice a nice button sam your thoughts uh my only thought was if i were him i would sort of put in some extra effort to organize things or try to do things and then make sure they're invited so make sure that you're doing kind of fun things that they would want to do plan something look for something just you might take a little extra effort this time it might not be like hey let's just go hang out, but find some things, invite them to do some things

that might give them a little extra incentive. I think to make it clear that you still want to hang out with them like that. I love that. That's good. I'd say to add on top of that, get the Mount Chugmore or get Sam, Sam's book. Do you like a book club? Do a book club. I'll have a group sesh over the Bastard Brigade. If you read a book, you're going to want to talk about it. And it's nice to have people to talk to about it. And this is a great book to talk over. It's such juicy stuff.

Dude, it's riveting. I said it was swashbuckling and airtight. I said that. I don't think you heard me, but I wanted you to know I said that. Yeah. I'm glad he said it. Thanks, Chad. What up, Chad and JT?

I'm getting a golden retriever soon and have been struggling thinking of a good name for him. Any ideas I would really appreciate? Fuck Puzio. Puzio is a dude I have fought in high school. There's not really bad blood, but there was. So not Puzio then? Yeah, not Puzio.

Boy, a golden retriever. I don't – okay, I will say that the – I had a roommate once, and she had a little dog named Ramses, which I always thought was the coolest name for a dog. So I don't want to rip her off necessarily, but I really liked that name. So I'll just throw that out there. It's a name I really liked. Do you have a pet?

I do not have a pet, no. Do you have roommates or you live solo? I live solo. I travel a little bit too much for a dog at least. I'm running into that. Grew up with a lot of pets. We had my mom and my mom. My mom was pretty good with names actually.

She had some fun names growing up. Cool. All right. What's up? What was that? Oh growing up. Cool. All right. What's up? What about us? Oh, yeah. Fuck. I was thinking I just went straight to Greek gods.

I was like Apollo, Achilles, Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper. All of Mount Olympus. Mount Olympus, Zeus. Zeus is a good dog name. Yeah. Dude, I had a dog named zeus i just remember there it is yeah all right dear kings of stoke hi my name is katherine i'm from sweet home alabama my brother trent got me listening to the pod about a year ago and i've been stoked ever since

i'm sure you all haven't had many married women sending questions for the pod but i'm in need of some advice my husband and i have been married for two years now and he's my best friend the only problem is i've been dealing with his new obsession with D&D, Dungeons and Dragons. He started playing with a group of nerd friends from work about a year ago. He has completely geeked out over this newly found passion to be a dungeon master and make campaigns

for his friends to play. He now spends every Friday night with his bros fighting rogue half-orcs and rolling the dice. Imagine if Will the Wise from Stranger Things Season 3. While I'm genuinely happy he's found something that makes him happy, I miss spending time with him and I can't relate to this new hobby. How do I win back his heart or mend this rift between us? Thanks for the sage advice and wise counsel.

Y'all really, y'all always, that y'all always relay on the pod. So is the problem that she can't spend time with him anymore is that it or is she fearing he's turning into a nerd i don't think it's the time thing because he's only doing it on friday nights which seems pretty reasonable i think that's what she was saying that she wants to hang out with him more right but he says he's only doing it on friday night so i feel like that's was that in the question yeah no she did say um he now spends every friday night with his bros maybe it's tough because it's a friday night you know she's done with her work week she wants to hit the town okay yeah can they reschedule it a different night that's the first thing to ask um

um i don't think it's that bad of a thing that he's doing though you know what i mean but every friday night i mean it's it's kind of a night you look forward to especially if you're working yeah but if he if he can switch nights though i think it's all good then right yeah if he's doing it on like a wednesday yeah or every other night or something or every other sorry every other friday night something like that yeah yeah i mean i i i relate to her on this because like i would be kind of peeved if uh if like because that's something you look especially with your significant other whatever you look forward to the weekend you're like oh we can do something we could go and he's crushing dungeon and dragons on like friday pick a pick a Monday every Friday yeah pick a Monday

yeah I feel for the dude though because I'm sure he's having a good time and like he could be doing worse stuff like he could be like getting hammered or you know um going to the strip club or something yeah it's like pretty uh innocent and I just picture him and his boys having so much fun it's but you gotta spread it out it's like in Knocked Up where just picture him and his boys having so much fun it's but you got to spread it out it's like in knocked up where she catches him doing his fantasy draft yeah that was such a great scene yeah i forgot about that scene yeah um except one of the guys is drafting like matt suey and i was like i don't know if uh that would be guy. All right. Ola and Jabal, Sultans of Stoke. I'm in a rather confusing predicament.

One of my closest homies is a gal, but she's one of my closest friends. She, like many of the friends in the friend group, has mingled around and dated some of the guys in the group, which has been pretty much chill, but now it's different. My little bro, who is an absolute lady killer, started spending some time around my friend. And when I asked what was up, she was thankfully straight up with a bro. She is crushing hard on my bro. But he's a 16-year-old lady killer? Yeah, his younger brother is. Huh. I know.

This seems like it has high potential to get very uncomfortable very quickly. I guess it's a... I would say it's a bit tough. It's a judgment call whether you think they really have a shot at something like if it could be a nice relationship and develop into something then you know you want to give that a chance you don't want to step in the middle of that if it's something where you're pretty sure one of them's going to get hurt then I would try

to put the kibosh on it yeah and. And I think his feelings are at stake. He might be, uh, you know, maybe not in love with this girl, but likes her and it would kind of hurt him in a way. So maybe I'm projecting that, but I kind of feel,

I mean, if you wrote in, obviously there's pretty intense feelings there. So maybe just say that to your brother and her and be like, guys, like individually, not as a group, but like,

just be like, look, uh, I don't know if I'm okay with this and just see how they respond to that yeah yeah you can at least bring it up and feel it out a little bit i concur what up sultans of stoke i'm dealing with an issue at work with this girl who's a mega babe we've worked together for a year and aside from some minor flirting in the office i've never made a move because we worked so close and i didn't want things to get awkward if it didn't work out. Recently, everyone's

seats got moved around and we are no longer sitting by each other. Since we aren't immediately by each other, I think it would be okay to ask her out now. I feel like I might have missed my window with this girl now since it's been so long. Do you bros have any suggestions for how to move forward with this girl that I haven't made a move on yet? Thanks in advance, my

dudes. Ask her out. I don't think a window has closed, I would say. And, you know, not to be prude, because I don't want to get in the way of what could be love, but I would check what your company's HR policy is too. Oh, for sure. Check that, but then if everything's a-okay on that end then just be like

hey i miss uh us sitting close to each other let's hang out let's go do karaoke and some mini golf i love that go look at the skyline and yeah i love saying i miss sitting close like hey i miss out on that time we used to spend together we need to put something else on the calendar to make up for it yeah like you and me dinner at, dinner at Ruth Chris. What up, Stoke Council? I'm prepping a storm area 51. Do you Sultans of Stoke have any advice on how to best handle this situation in the desert? Love to hear from Strider, the love guru,

and just in case he's found a way to handle this with love rather than weapons. Love the pod and fuck Puzio. What is it? What we should do about it? Say it again, all right. What's his name? Sam, do you know the guy Bob?

Bob Lazar. Bob Lazar. He advised people to not go to Area 51 because heavy military personnel will come and shoot you. Yes. That was the first thought that came into my mind is that there are people there with big guns who have orders to uh yeah shoot you if you get too close yeah be very careful with this yeah so i'd advise this guy to watch independence day and uh get his fill that way ah all right um i agree sam any any thoughts no more than i do i I concur with that. Cool. Watch Alien, too.

And what else is there? I don't even know. Predator? In terms of good Alien movies? Yeah, just... Yeah, Mars Attacks. Oh, dude, Mars Attacks. Oop-dee-pa-da-pa. Yeah.

Or try to become an astronaut. Do you like The Martian? Oh, I haven't seen The Martian. I read the book, which I very much enjoyed. I haven't seen the movie yet with Matt Damon. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't seen the movie yet. Who's your favorite writer?

Favorite writer. David Foster Wallace is the one that comes to mind. David Foster Wallace and Richard Russo are two that come to mind. I'm a huge David Foster Wallace fan. I said on the podcast a couple weeks ago that if I had to recommend one book, it'd probably be a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again.

But it also might have been the time that I read it. Are you more a fan of his fiction or his nonfiction? Definitely his nonfiction. I think his nonfiction is just amazing. Yeah, I actually kind of struggle with some of the fiction. Go ahead. I actually kind of struggle with some of the fiction. Yeah, it's a little, someone called it a loose baggy monster sort of infamously once.

It's not a bad way to describe it though. But did you read the DT Max book about him? I did, yes. That was tough. And I think now if he wrote it now, it'd be even tougher because the cultural moments change. Why is it tough? Because he was kind of a, I mean, he had a lot lot of mental problems and so i think life was hard for him but he was a messy person and he did some kind of ugly things with the people in his life a little stalkerish sometimes yeah yeah

and it's and it's it's brief in the book but i think now if they wrote it'd be it'd be bigger yeah but yeah he's brilliant yeah in, in fact, I have to... When I'm writing something, especially, I try not to read him because it's easy to do a bad Herbert Foster Wallace impression because he has such a distinct voice that if you can't live up to that, then you're going to sound like you're doing a bad parody of him. So sometimes I have to try to not read him.

Yo, what's up, broheems? There's this total babe in my work way out of my league. That looks like a 50 50 mix of Sloan from entourage and Mia Toretto. Not only is she a total bombshell, but she's cool as hell. And we clicked a ton at this start connection was feeling good. And we even unintentionally matched outfits for a week straight. I was about to pull up from three point range, but lost all my stoke. When I found out she has some big shot boyfriend, he's a CFO at a startup.

He's my size though. And I could probably take him. Not to mention, I only have a couple of weeks left at this job. Should I start beef or just move on to the next honey? Thanks for the helps with my dudes. Wishing you all the stoke. Dorian, shout out to my boy Grant for getting me hooked on the pod. Sam? I mean, starting a beef probably isn't the best way to win her over I would say yeah um I mean that's that's a tough one I guess I would try to keep in touch with her definitely um try dating someone else and see if your feelings change if you are still that infatuated with her um I don't know then maybe it's time to try to make a move or something i don't think trying to beat up her boyfriend first thing out of the gate is probably

the best strategy though yeah i'd say this guy i admire the uh the cojones sort of joe canady jr vibes but uh i i wouldn't uh i'd advise him not to interfere in her, you know. I like the idea of trying to hang someone else, you know. Yeah, I think brawling a dude will suggest bad judgment to her in a way that might be a no-go. Yeah, this guy's romantic though, for sure. Yeah. What's up, brogs, bro plus dogs? Hell yeah.

I appreciate how much you guys always want to help others with their dilemmas but i'm just wondering a very simple question how are you guys doing today are you having a good time i just want to make sure my favorite stokers to listen to are doing okay y'all feel me sometimes the dudes who are helping all their bros out are the ones who need the most help sorry if that got a little deep i'm just trying to look out for you have a good day and keep on bashing bros bones sam how are you doing today i'm doing pretty good today um yeah looking forward to the weekend it's not quite as beastly hot out here as it has been so i think that'll be fun yeah how about you guys

i'm good dude i was nervous for this you know it's always's always tough to be on mic and on camera talking, you know? But I'm digging it. Okay. Yeah, I saw a concert last night with my girlfriend, and that was really fun. Okay. What did you see? We saw Friendship. They're a good band.

I would say they're like a more modern, like, Hall & Oates. And they were cool during the Q&A, and they were talking about their partnership. It made me think about our partnership. cool during the Q&A and they were talking about their partnership and made me think about our partnership. And then me and the GF had an emotional talk later about being, about me needing

to improve on some stuff. It was good. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, damn. I gave her a mean look. I fucked up. But we're good now. I love her. She's the best. Yeah, I'm doing good today. I had had a good breakfast what did you have for breakfast I had some eggs and toast for breakfast

pretty straight forward whole wheat or white white bread this morning I had no for sure what about me oh my dog I'm sorry no I'm feeling no we want to know man i'm sorry

uh i'm pretty good i was pretty i've been pretty irritable the past few days uh i've been i've been on low sleep uh which you know sleep is part of my beef of the week but sleep is important now and like um usually i'm a pretty jolly dude like Like, I feel good. Yeah, everything's great. But I was just, like, pissed off. And, like, that rarely happens. Like, my girlfriend was, like, for the first time, she's like, I saw you cranky for the first time. I'm like, I know. I'm probably not sleeping enough.

So, that was kind of a shock because I don't want to be seen being cranky. But I woke up today, I ran through it all and processed it and now I feel good. And I'm stoked to be at the podcast and I'm stoked that I read a book. Cool. Yeah. I think that sounds good. All right.

Last question. Thank you so much, Sam, for taking the time. This was really great. And we love your book. Yo, what's for taking the time. This was really great. And we love your book. Yo, what's up, my dudes?

My name is Joe. My brother recently introduced me to the pod. You guys are freaking sick and I appreciate the stoke you guys have added to my life. This question is for JT. I'm a high school kid and a lot of the guys are looking at porn pretty often. I'm a porn addict, so I don't watch it anymore. Me and a few friends of mine

have been trying to shake the habit since the seventh grade and it's really the only thing that brings my stoke down. I've gone to group therapy to fix it anymore. Me and a few friends of mine have been trying to shake the habit since the seventh grade and it's really the only thing that brings my stoke down. I've gone to group therapy to fix it and it's helped a lot but I need that last push to kick this for good. I know you've given some tips

in previous episodes but I was just wondering what you think the next baby step for me is. I appreciate all you guys do and stay gnarly. For me, dude, I just put blocks on my phone so I can't... It a very simple if you have

an iphone it's a very simple button you just hit that says uh adult content is blocked and then you can't look at it and then i did i put this software on my computer which was a little more of a pain in the ass but only took a day called net nanny same deal just can't look at it so i have to like i'd have to go to great lengths to get porn and most of the time i don't have the time or the uh or the energy in me i watch youtube videos uh that like talk about the uh the debilitating effects of watching too much oh yes kind of scare yourself straight yeah yeah that's smart um do you have a any doesn't have to be about porn but like just a way to like resist things like a method that you use or or some thinking often getting like getting out of the house going for a run something like that

can can help um i think i get sort of fixated on things so when i need something like that i kind of get away from it walk out go go for a run something like that that usually helps me dude that's a really smart in the in uh recovery programs they call having its smart feet have smart feet get get the hell out of just don't isolate get the hell out of your room go get outside and be with people yeah get active um active. All right, two more questions. What's the last YouTube rabbit hole you went down? YouTube rabbit hole I went down. Boy, I ended up watching a bunch of Stevie Wonder videos the other day that I did not expect

when I started to think about that. That was a fun rabbit hole to fall into, I guess. He's a genius. What was your favorite song by him? Living in the, what is it? Living just enough. Living for the city. Living for the city.

Superstition, I think, is still my favorite. I like that song. Or Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours. Signed, Sealed, Delivered, yep. That's a good one. Were you watching him when he was like a kid? Because he was playing in Motown when he was like 12, right? Yeah, in fact, I was in Detroit a few years ago for a talk,

and you can tour the old Motown house, and they have the candy machine that Stevie Wonder used to get candy bars from there. So it's pretty cool. That's crazy. That's cool. It's good to know Genius was eating candy too. And they always had to put his favorite candy bars in a certain place on the candy bar machine because obviously he couldn't see where they were.

So he had to know it was like three buttons over, and that's where he would get his candy bar. So they had to be very particular about that. Nice. Okay, last one. What are your thoughts on the afterlife and God? Afterlife and God. Okay. I grew up up in i grew up going i'm in catholic school all the way through k through 12 um but that's sort of fallen off and i don't believe

in any sort of personal afterlife so i don't think we retain any sort of memories or anything about our personalities like that. I'm mostly on the side of I don't believe in God. So I'd call myself maybe a kind of a jovial atheist if I had to put anything on it. I don't feel like I'm stringent or too confrontational about it, I would say. And so do you think morality kind of evolved out of like, just a Darwinian benefit? Like it's good when we work together for the betterment of everybody? I think, yeah, I think you, I think we, there's definitely a Darwinian part that shaped both our bodies, our biologies, but also our minds. And I think human beings, one of the reasons we're successful is kind of, as you were hinting, that we do have this altruistic side to us. We're

not, you know, just out there necessarily for ourselves. We do have this greedy streak sometimes, but we evolve to work together, build things in groups. So I think that taking away the morality of having like a God involved with it doesn't necessarily mean that we don't have some sort of kind of built-in morality with ourselves. I think we evolved to have that as human beings did any of the physicists that you look up to believe in god or were they mostly like agnostic at most and atheist on the other end well in the back you know in the 1600s 1700s 1800s everyone i mean like post like 1906 or something. Okay, post that.

There were a few that I've talked to who do believe in God or some sort of deity, something like that. But it's pretty rare among physicists and biologists, I would say. Amongst chemists, you do get a lot more of that. And then even among the other fields, you do get some who believe in it. But physicists especially, it's pretty rare. Anything else, Doug? No. I thought that was great.

Yeah, it was fun. We loved your book. Dude, it was really... Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on the show. Just such a fun read, and the writing is beautiful. Yeah. Stokers, check it out.

The Bastard Brigade, the true story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean, K-E-A-N. And is there anything else you want to plug? Yeah, they can go to my website. It's samkean.com, K-E-A-N. I have some excerpts there. I have some other books. I've written four other books about

different things, all full of good, fun, interesting, spooky tales about different science things. So check them out. Is there any other scientific breakthroughs on the horizon that we need to be ready to put the kibosh on? Put the kibosh on? The only one that really pops to mind is sort of the, there's a technology called CRISPR. Yeah. Gene editing, genetic engineering stuff,

which we put in. I mean, I wouldn't say put the kibosh on it and that's a very powerful tool, but especially when you're talking about editing human beings and human embryos with that, you can get into some pretty dicey territory. So that one probably needs some rules and regulations about it. But are we going to have to escalate? Cause like and japan aren't going to be as uh restrictive about

it as we are and then pretty soon they're gonna have like super species that are gonna you know outthink us and out battle us we're gonna have to manhattan project crisper yeah oh boy um and can you be our understanding of things like how intelligence works genetically is so crude nowadays that I don't think we're anywhere near being able to do that. I mean, we can't even like change eye color or hair color, much less like build a super species. But dude, you kind of sound like Neil Bohr at the start. I know that's true. Come to rue these words. Did you read Copenhagen?

What's that? The Heisenberg- these words. Did you read Copenhagen? What's that? The Heisenberg-Neil Bohr play, Copenhagen. Yeah, I saw that in D.C. here a few years ago. Oh, you watched it? It's a great play. I love that. Yeah, it's really good. I'm worried about that technology where you can basically, on video, make it look like, for example, they look like Obama.

Oh, the deep fakes, yeah. Yeah, Obama was saying something, and it's completely forged, but the video looks just like him, and the voice is the same, and that's scary. That stuff is scary, and that's probably a little bit closer to being something that could be abused, I would think. I guess you could use that as an excuse if you get caught doing something. That was totally. They deep faked me.

They deep faked me. How come every video of you is a deep fake? I don't know. Someone's after me. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, this was not a deep fake.

That is Sam Keen. What up, Sam? Hello. Dude, we'll have you back for the next one. Or just to kick it, if you ever want to come on and just shoot the shit about what's happening over there in D.C., if you're into that. Yeah, we can hit the beach, Poke Bowl, podcast.

Yeah, if you come out this way, get some pokey with us. Yeah, I do. That sounds good. Sweet. Fuck yeah. I knew it. Thank you. Sweet, dude.

All right. Thanks so much. Talk to you later, guys. Later, man. That was cool. That was fun. Yeah. Yeah.

He's a good sport. He hung around for those questions. Yeah, he was. He's a good dude. Aaron, what did you think? I loved it. It's great. Whoa.

Hi. Wow. Aaron. Dude, that means a lot to me. That means you're a crush. That would be terrible if I was like, nah. But I think you're pretty honest, though. Yeah, you do keep it real.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was fun. You're one of the realest, dog. All right, Chad, who is your beef of the week my beef of the week is with the guy at the register at whole foods yesterday i believe his name is dave what up dave um it's more of a beef with myself though i've just been i was just really irritable because we got a lot we've been super busy you're the hardest working guy I know, man. I'm not sure about that, but thank you.

And a lack of sleep on top of it. So I was just, you know. To be honest, Stokers, my stoke was low. It was low as fuck. And I was so mad for no reason like my roommate would be like hey what are you doing like what the fuck did you just say to me you know and so i was at whole foods and i was getting food i got i got i was like i need to load up on some nutritious stuff so i can regain my stoke and um the guy at the register goes cash or credit credit? And I was like, credit. And he goes, what?

And in my mind, I was like, what, bitch? You want to fucking go? Like, I was about to throw down at Whole Foods, which is rare for me. I never really want to throw down with anyone, but I was about to go take my tomato soup and shove it into his fucking face. Well, and dude, you're in charge of a lot of stuff now.

And I think as you transition from being like just a pure stoker to someone who has to like manage other people's stoke, it's a lot of responsibility. Yeah, I guess managing stoke, it's like that question that came in, you gotta like look after your own stoke. Yeah, and you gotta be on top of stuff all the time. So you're expecting that from everybody else too.

I totally relate to that. I appreciate you being so open about it too oh no yeah i was i was cranky and i was about to throw down whole foods which is like a pretty dank establishment even though it's taken over by amazon yeah um but they have good eats they're keeping people healthy for the most yeah they have good. They have good arugula. I got beef stew. And I was stoked after that. But Dave at the register, I was just about to, you know, fucking. Dude, you love Dave. You're just having a hard day. Yeah, I know. I was just about to chokeslam him. Yeah. He probably would have taken me though. I'd probably bet on you, dude. Yeah. Not knowing Dave from Adam. Daveave if you're listening we'll spar and this is the heat but you're reflecting on it you need to reflect on it you need to be you know i think it's it's noble work you're doing yeah yeah no i've i've uh i have no reason to

complain but sometimes the crankiness comes out of nowhere and you're like you're like i gotta go whole foods. Yeah, so that's it. That's my beef. What's your beef? Dude, my beef is with Jason Statham, The Rock, and Vin Diesel because there's a Wall Street Journal article, and I think we should even cover it next week, where it talks about how all three of those guys have it in their contract

and also sometimes just like an unspoken contract that they won't look worse in a fight than the other one and i totally get that because they want to be the big cheese in the action world and it's a competitive game but you guys are the models that we're looking to for inspiration i think we we need to learn some humility too because i have that problem you know what i mean i get like territorial over like who's getting the most shine and and and so i get where they're coming from because i'm not better but i would love it if those guys could just be like, you know what? I'm going to get my ass beat in this movie, and that's okay. Yeah, don't they want that competition so it drives them to be better and bigger?

They do to a degree. Yeah. I think they should just go all the way. Yeah, that's a bit of a letdown. I heard they even keep track of like, oh, he's thrown me through one wall, so I get to throw him through one wall. Vin Diesel has his sister who's a producer, literally keep track of what the punch count is for each one.

Dude, well, the thing about Tom Cruise is in Mission Impossible, he gets so fucked up. Yeah. And you're like, and he's still going. If you see The rock you know just taking everyone down throwing throwing people through walls never really getting hurt you're like all right well it's not relatable he's not going through tough times right now but tom cruise is like falling from shit you know breaking his ankle on buildings and shit and and he's still going

yeah we respect the perseverance yeah i don't respect the look as much yeah it's not about being top dog all the time they need to talk to tom yes i was bummed out about that chad who is your legend of the week my legend of the week is neil armstrong i watched uh first man on the plane back from new york and it was legit um but this show i talked about this with jt it really showed how brave these dudes were because you they really sort of uh the movie did a great job of portraying like how when you're in these ships how flimsy they felt because it's all just metallic and it's just like it's a tin can yeah yeah it's like you're literally strapped to a rocket and they're like all right see you dudes hope you make it back you know everyone's dying and he and then he had a tough personal life too

his daughter died and he persevered he like still kept going and uh he made it to the moon. But he stayed humble, it seemed like, from the movie. And, you know, one small step for a man, one giant leap for Neil Armstrong, dude. Master of compartmentalization. Yeah. Just strapping himself to that rocket, dude. Yeah. And spoiler alert, in the beginning,

he puts his daughter's bracelet away, which is like his last memory of her, and puts it away in a cupboard and you're like, oh he's The kind of metaphors that he's forgot about her. But then when he's on the moon He's made it all the way there. He drops the bracelet on the moon. Is that true? I don't know if it's true, but I love that in the story. Yeah, because he didn't forget about her It was always a part of him. He just couldn't let us see it. Yeah Dude, that's still up there that's true i hope so yeah that's so cool yeah the moon dude do you think they got there and they're like this this place

sucks well it's supposed to do no i think they thought it was dope but that's pretty hilarious yeah that's all right yeah let's head back buzz is like we could hang for another hour he's like i'm over it i saw it yeah it was fun can't wait to go to the next one i was like dude celebrate a little bit dude mars yeah yeah right when they land on the moon it's probably when they're flying back he's like can't wait to get to fucking mars dude but it's supposed to have a uh and a real huge effect on you like people who have been in space and seen the earth it changes them from i mean i guess you as you'd expect it wouldn't i think there's a documentary about it but i heard like it was either i heard neil armstrong was never the same afterwards he

was kind of like a sullen guy like sad yeah like it made him sad about humanity to see it because they're so small i don't know if i know why though yeah yeah i mean i kind of need that part to make this yeah put together but i just heard it changed him and i'm not sure why though aaron have you heard about this uh yeah he i mean he did kind of just kind of disappear off the map whereas buzz is kind of more of a celebrity yeah buzz revels in it a little bit more neil is kind of like he's a real introvert it seems like yeah yeah maybe i should stay on earth and not go into space what what is you what do. What do you want? Well, I fear losing my stoke. You know, you go in space,

you're like, I went to space, then you see Earth from that vantage point, and then you're like, and then the stoke gets stuck to have your tank along with the gravity. You can't bronze.

Thank you, Aaron. Thank you. Yeah, I forgot to ask Sam how important tanning was in his life but I did have that written down if I had a spacesuit I'd install fake tanning lights in there like little UV things right just a roast yeah smash cut to you in a space station with the little goggles on just get a nice bronze everyone gets up there to visit you like in their visiting spacecraft you just look like you've spent a week in Bali.

Get a pina colada in your hand. We're all in spacesuits. What's that buzzing? Oh, I'm tanning. Tanning, yeah. We have to do a refuel in the nebula. In three counter clicks, you're like, yeah, after I'm done tanning. Dude, they should have done that with George Clooney's character in Gravity, you know, because he was sort of like, he's like, have some champagne for me, Sandra Bullock, or whatever.

And it's like, dude, he drifted away tanning. So much cooler. Yeah, like he knows he's going to die, but he's like, I'm going to die tanning. She's like, can barely hear him, but she hears this faint buzz. Dude, I've tried to tan when it was pure dark clouds outside. I was like, the sun will come through. Just two hours outside. Not a dash of sunlight.

Did it work? I think so. Yeah, it got a little bit. That's so funny to think of you just like laying out there. Yeah. What if, what if because there's no ozone layer, you just like, you can just walk out and like the sun's rays, like it takes like two seconds. Dude, that's instant tan.

So you just go close your eyes close your mouth plug your nose that makes me feel old man ish because then it makes me like resent these young kids and their easy tans i'm like back in my day it took two hours to get that kind of bronze yeah dude that's gonna be the new age tan though you know 50 years from now everyone's gonna be like dude you look you got some great color what happened you i went to space yeah yeah Well, that's what they say in Australia, that there's a hole in the ozone there. Really? Which is why the sun's much stronger there, which is why I went there to study abroad. All right.

Who is your legend of the week? Your babe. Oh, shoot. Chad, who is your babe of the week? My babe of the week is sleep. Sleep restores all, restores all cellular functions, keeps you happy, healthy, and with a hard dong. If I'm not jerking it too much, I wake up with a hard dong after sleep. And it's just that, you know, sleep is so important, so I'm stoked on it at the moment.

And I just love waking up in the morning and just you know waking up and be like let's get this started nice yeah sleep is so huge sleep is huge and there's nothing better when you're like you're like i've been lacking sleep for a while let me get a full night's sleep then you get that full night's sleep and you wake up and you're like boom nice yeah what about you i totally agree how long do you sleep how many hours usually like six yeah what time did you wake up today i i went to bed early last night i went to bed like 11 uh and i woke up, I think, at like 6.30, 7. Killer. Yeah. Dude, my babe of the week is Laura Dern.

Oh, nice. Yeah. We didn't recap the final episode of Big Little Lies. Nicole Kidman was great, and I was happy that she was triumphant, but I think overall the season was a letdown, but one person was not a letdown, and it's because they really put her in a position to succeed, and she's just the best actress.

Laura Dern. I mean, is anyone better at melting down than Laura Dern? Nobody. And then it reminds me of her in Enlightened. That was like my favorite show on HBO. A really, really good show, and she's so great on it. And she's in Jurassic Park, and she's in the David Lynch movies. She's just one of the best around. And laura durn you're my babe of the

week what do you think about laura durn aaron you mean dr ellie sadler big fan get it girl legend chad who is your legend of the week we already did that neil armstrong oh shit did i never do my legend of the week yeah i think we might have skipped your election oh oh we were talking about neil right what happened yep we were too caught up in neil my legend of the week was the band friendship who i saw last night with my girlfriend and uh got to talk to them after the show a little bit and they were just the nicest guys they really took their time with all their fans, and they were really warm and asked questions, and they just went above and beyond.

And then watching them perform live acoustic in a small setting like that, it really was moving. And they're just really absolute pros. One of the guys was about to hit his big vocal solo, and real subtly he just tapped his mic and then pointed up right before to get the engineer to turn the volume up so he could sing softly but still have a project. And I was like, locked in, locked in.

Super cool. Friendship, guys. Check out some of their songs. I'm going to Spotify them after this. All right, Chad, what is your quote of the week? My quote of the week comes from Eric Cartman from South Park. I need to watch South Park again. It's so good.

Somebody's got to eat all that bacon, Kyle. Might as well be us. Welcome to the firm. I forget which episode. I just Googled it. Nice. But I like that. I like when, I don't know.

I like business quotes. I think they're funny. Yeah, they are funny. Yeah. What's your quote? Mine is from, I think this is the greatest speech in movie history, the most inspiring speech in movie history. It's Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday.

I knew it. And it's a really good movie. It's actually really ahead of its time in terms of, like, the subject matter. It's about, like, concussions and other things that are really relevant right now in football, and the team is totally broken apart. The star quarterback, Willie Beeman,

has lost his way, becomes some kind of diva, but he has his reasons for being upset. Al Pacino, he's long in the tooth. It's at the end of his career. He's the coach, and he's kind of lost the locker room,

and everyone's just dealing with a lot of problems. So he's got to give them a speech to bring them together so that they can fucking kick ass in this game. And it's long, but I'm going to go for it. Here's what Al Pacino says. You know, when you get old in life, things get taken from you. That's, that's part of life. But you only learn that when you start losing stuff.

You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half step too late or too early, you don't quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast, and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone around us

to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. I'm just full on doing a monologue because we know when we add up all those inches, that's going to make the fucking difference between winning and losing. Between living and dying. I'll tell you this. In any fight, it is the guy who's willing to die who's going to win that inch. And if I know if I'm going to have any life anymore, it is because I am still willing to fight and die for that inch because that is what living is the six inches in front of your face

it keeps going do you want to finish it yeah now i can't make you do it you got to look at the guy next to you look into his eyes now i you're going to see a guy who is willing to go that inch with you. He looked in my eyes. You're going to see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it, you're going to do the same for him.

You're going to do the same for him. That's a team, gentlemen. And either we heal now as a team or we will die as individuals. That's football, guys. That's all it is. That was beautiful. Yeah, dude, I fucking love that speech, man.

I love that speech so much. Yeah, dude, I fucking love that speech, man. I love that speech so much. Guys, thanks for tuning in to episode 84 of Going Deep with Chad and JT. I forgot to do the mid-roll. Oh, did we forget our ads? Yeah. Well, maybe we'll close it out, and then I'll just read it and then you can perfect dude so that was episode 84 guys check out sam keen's book thank you sam for stopping in

rate and review the podcast that helps us out a lot and we love them and we should maybe do a review of the week yeah oh and we also have to what's our term for getting after it this week? I was going to say, you want to blitz pre-Fontaine? I dig that. Let's frost some tips, boys. Yes. Let's frost some tips. You know I'm down for that.

Yeah. Oh, we're both down for that. All right. This comes from Pleasure Pike. Sub Pike subject it's always the right answer so I was going through a rough time in my life and I was pretty down the dumps my brother suggested this podcast because he claimed it would put me in a better mood

and give me some good vibes I wasn't a huge fan of podcasts but I decided to give it a try my god was my brother right this pod has made me such a happier person and I get so pumped every time I get to listen to a new episode it's super uplifting Thank you, Pleasure Pike. Hell yeah, dude. Thank you, man. Guys guys keep those reviews coming in they they mean a lot and they're fucking dank aaron you got a beef this week

no i'm pretty good that's awesome dude good for you um all right cool that's episode 84 thanks dudes boom clap stokers Later Alright I'll do that Don't stop recording yet If you need advice These guys are really nice You wanna know What to do Where to go

When you need someone to guide you Just watch the half-throat beside you Go and see Go and see Let's go deep I'm going deep Get a game Deep We'll go with the Cadence Team