Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 534: The Manhattan Project Part II - A Numbers Game

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

The boys pick back up on the story of The Manhattan Project, this week focusing on Oppenheimer's "Atomic Dream Team", the development of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the United States' unrelenting efforts (and gruesome mishaps) in weaponizing nuclear technology.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk on the left. That's one of the cannonballs I'm started. What was that? Home Harbor. Home Harbor. Oh, also a lot of pushback, a lot of pushback. Lots of pushback.

Come on, Killian Murphy. FDR, my friend. What's the pushback? Manifest destiny. That doesn't make any sense. Native Americans. That makes zero sense. That makes zero sense.

That makes zero sense. You didn't do that. That was your take. That's Teddy Roosevelt. That's Teddy Roosevelt. That's Teddy Roosevelt. Whoever is saying that's, that makes zero sense. You didn't do that. That was, you're talking about Teddy Roosevelt. That's Teddy Roosevelt. That's Teddy Roosevelt. But whoever's saying that's Franklin Roosevelt has no understanding, your DMs are wrong.

Yes, concentration camps for the Japanese. We're going to be talking about that. That wasn't him either. And they were not concentration camps. They were internment camps. Yeah, they were like awaiting, it was like a waiting room for justice. Yeah, I'm controversy. And we're going to be talking about the internment camps on this episode.

But yeah, the everything you were talking about before, that's all Teddy Roosevelt. It's the 1800s. No, it's not. It's early 1900s. It's my world. Birds of a feather. Are they related? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, distant cutler, like fourth cousins. Um, or no, there are third cousins. I like Teddy. Teddy created the National Park movement. Yeah, it was, what is the thing? Cause like Teddy or Eleanor Roosevelt was Teddy Roosevelt's niece. And Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were actually cousins. Wow.

They're like third cousins, that could cut something like that. Yeah, you could dip, you could dip your whir. There was the oyster cousins. Yeah, because there were like two warring factions of Roosevelt. There were the oyster Bay Roosevelts that, that was Teddy Roosevelts. And then there was the Hyde Park Roosevelts. That was Franklin Roosevelt family. The fancy Roosevelt.

Well, it's arguably a must. Actually, the oyster... Because Teddy Roosevelt was a rich kid that threw himself into fighting because he wanted to experience life. Yeah, because he was a sickly child and he went, get action. That was his catchphrase. Get action. FDRs like get these knees out of here. FDR was a nerd. Like he was unlike unpopular, which is like, he didn't figure out how to be like a guy until he was in his like 30s or 40s. Just, there's no way he just trained everybody. Like, you know how like, my dog trained us to like,

lift her up the stairs. Right? Like, he goes, she figured out, like, oh, oh, I could just wait by the stairs. You'll just lift me up. You think maybe some way, shape, or form. Yeah, he was just, he would have FDR kind of told everybody, hey, what if I just sit that's true all the time Mm-hmm. He would just fold himself into a bellwinter

I'm this is my main conspiracy Of this entire series. Yeah as a hika walk. He was lying about it to get clout on tiktok Well, I don't know the world. I think it was a big deal. No, I didn't work out for him No, no, no, no need to die, but we, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, here. Nice thing about Franklin Roosevelt's legs. You could eat ketchup right off. Yeah, buddy. We are. No, nobody's safe. Nobody's safe. For that. Still lives better than all of us. But the beginning of this episode, you got to remember what we now know, right? Because we're doing Manhattan Project. I like, you know, you know, it's about history. It's heavy. But remember right now, we're at the show, it's about a couple years before the real point of the Manhattan Project, which was to invite aliens into our

awareness. They are now. It was our knock on the door to the all of the various interdimensional creatures. They're living in our oceans generating UFOs by spec for each various pilot field for their nervous system to go out and examine us when we do it's 1933 there is a first object that we found it was in Italy. Do you see the blood vessel? The UFO blood vessel that pops when you start talking about nonsense? It's real. I see the blood vessel.

I also see our credibility melting away. No. No way. No. Right. I also see our credibility melting away. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no't get into small planes speaking of UFOs. Today speaking of melting, we're onto the Manhattan Project Part 2. Part 2. Now American research into atomic weapons had technically began long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But in truth, it was a half-hearted effort that wasn't much more than a series of meetings

and studies that were keeping the project in governmental limbo. If you want to get into your conspiracy head, just look at the S1 committee. It's an interesting group that's a way FDR will put together to develop the Manhattan Project, but old Van overbush. He is around each one of these corners, skulking, wondering, when do I get to be president? Come onhmm. Come on over, come on over, Van over. Indeed, what a game of red rooster that would be. What's it called again? Red Rover. Yeah.

You had roosters the game where you've been a man down and everybody tries to cover his back with cup. Oh my goodness. Clock clock indeed. But by September of 1942, almost a year after Pearl Harbor. I was keeping us on track. I know what you're up to. America got serious about its nuclear program when faced with intelligence that erroneously

told them that the Nazis were a hairs breadth away from discovering the secrets to atomic weaponry. Uh-oh, you want to like the secret memory. Eggs erroneous. Erroneous. Yes, it's because he used the word erroneous. Yes, it's from Ernest. It goes to camp. Ernest goes to camp. Oh, it's from the two guys who was burned and the other guy

that was the big fat guy and the other guy with the scrunched up face. They had no teeth. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just top right into it. It's really just get right into it. But you all remember the Nazis, the science for this was born in Nazi Germany. It was there ready to go. So you could see why everybody thought that Nazis out the joke. Well, great people were born in Nazi Germany, weren't they? Huh? They were born.

That's wrong. Forward. We made Germany better. After turning history later after the Nazis, you mean? Yes. Yes. Hitler's children, as they're called. It truly are. Oh, yeah. That's great. And they're called. Uh, it truly are.

Oh, yeah. That's great. And listen to the upcoming series on crowd rock, on No Dogs in Space for more on that. Ah, yes, he's weird. But to head up what was No Doubt, a massive project, the government chose a man named General Leslie Groves. Yeah. Yep, yep, he is definitely looking like a pig and fatigues. But he was a man.

He got the job done. Not on that day, but no. Also, let's do right now, up top, Kelly and Murphy did not know. Is it his Kelly? It's Kelly and Murphy, which kind of makes him work off and cool. It's nice, but this is my official. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

His parents named him. I'm learning a million. It's a very common Irish name. It's an Irish name. It's common Irish name. Yeah, that sounds about right. God. Let's get right into it.

Let's just hop right in. The Groves was a decisive man who hardly ever took more than an hour to make even the most complicated decisions. I like it. Groves was so confident in his own abilities that he was often quoted as saying, if I can't do the job, no man can't get me that confident. It took him an hour to order at Starbucks. Make a choice. No more than an hour. Oh, okay. No more than an hour. Okay. He was making bigger decisions than that. They said, the thing

about Leslie Groves is that he knew how to bring the spam to the front lines, which is kind of a euphemistic turn. The poor shoulder. We'll just the idea of like, he could figure out how to get things or he could figure it out. I get you. He's a logistics master. Okay. And he was also a massive dickhead. Makes sense. Yes. That's partly because he was arrogant,

extraordinarily arrogant, but his arrogance was only part of what made people hate him. What truly made people's blood boil was the fact that 99 times out of a hundred Leslie Groves was absolutely right. But you know the problem is with this guy not understanding office culture. The thing is called make it look like you're working. Oh, you make like you know when the guy shows up he's new and he's just like, what if working here for this?

Dick McFuck's pancake shit. And then that's where you actually shit. You drink the batter and you shit the pancake on the right. Have you been to dick, fucks pancake shit? Because actually it's not that bad. It's not that bad, but Rory, new Rory, he's a little annoying. Yeah, I actually would base it all on the fupa because Leslie Groves has truly one of the most important fuppas in all of history.

About Foupa. There's something about a Foupa that like on one day, back in the day, it denoted responsibility. Yeah, a stalwart nature. Yeah, but now you just Chris Christie and a baseball uniform. Oh my God. The best.

Because they have the same body. They do. Wow. Well, I have no Chris Christie's far beyond. I would put Leslie Groves more like as Chris Christie has like a tweedle dumb body. They do. Wow. No, Chris Christie's far beyond. I would put Leslie Groves more like as Chris Christie has like a tweedle dumb body. Yes. Yes. Yes. Leslie Groves is more of a penguin body. Oh, yeah. And I'm talking old school penguin because even if you look at his face, he has that nose that comes out to the point point. He does. Yeah. But Groves was notorious for bad first

impressions. But more often than not, everyone around them had to swallow their pride because groves very simply got shit done. For example, groves had been in charge of all domestic army construction during World War II, which was basically the infrastructure that made America the industrial powerhouse of production that made us one of the big dogs of the war. A big dog, do you? Thank you, ladies. Yeah, that's right. All the men are away. The ladies come out to work. Yeah, I said, I googled Rosie Riveter the other day. Holy hell. She was hot. Yeah. Yeah. Rosie Riveter. Pamela. Oh, this guy looks like a fat version of that one dude who did all the scary voices. Remember that with the no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,'s a fat Vincent Price, Michael Jackson, by the way, Vincent Porx. Oh, well, Groves oversaw the building of camps, depots, army bases,

munition plants, hospitals, airplane factories, and most impressively, Groves was the dude who built the Pintigas. Yeah, he was, again, he's a go-to guy for getting massive projects done. And getting them done domestically, less impressively when we're talking about domestic camps. Groves also oversaw the construction of the Japanese internment camps that wrongfully imprisoned 120,000 Japanese American citizens throughout World War II out of a question of loyalty. I was hanging out with a friend of our family and they every year they go down and they do this dance that is a theme around an army base that was throwing a big dance around the time of Pearl Harbor when Pearl Harbor happened.

And right after that, they basically everybody that was on the coast was in a constant panic about getting attacked again. So back in the day, the West Coast. The West Coast. Yeah, everybody there was like they threw a big dance and then it got, it famously got interrupted by the, there was like a false alarm and there was a bunch of sirens and every the air raid sirens and every ranaway and it's up the dance. So now what they do is they do a yearly sort of like we're gonna do that same dance. We're gonna dress in period costume and do swing dancing and stuff and she says and it's amazing because there's this one Japanese family that always comes in full and term in camp costume and they dance and they just love being a part of

it. Now it's like, do they? That's got to know. It's a friend of the family. He really keeps it going to the family. Are you serious about that? Yes. I'm not. No, no, no, no.

I know that's not a bit. No, no. And it's like doing a dance in Italy where you get a couple of guys in full concentration camp, like pajama outfits. Remember Robin Williams and Jacob the liar Alright, well everyone has fun in a different way. Don't think my god. Yeah, it sounds like the Jerry Lee low or the the Jerry Lewis the Jerry Lewis concentration camp clown movie That's good. Next year might go into public demand. They're saying that we might be able to see it next year

That's incredible. The day the clown cried. The day the clown cried. Okay. But regardless of his sins by July of 1942, Leslie Groves was overseeing a million men and women who were dedicated solely to the war effort. And he was spending around eight billion dollars in the process. But part of what made this herculean effort possible was the fact that Groves spent zero effort in the human resources department. Yeah, man, don't room for that shit, man. Now we're building that in, bitch. No HR is going to get in the way of all of the war crimes.

That's the idea. He was demanding abrasives, sarcastic, disrespectful, and was described as a son of a bitch and the biggest asshole in the military by more than a few people. You know, big, that ass list of people with the biggest in the military by more than a few people. You know, big, that ass list of people with the biggest in the military. But he was also like so many people in this story brilliant in his own field. An incredible construction form and a genius at organization.

And if not for him, the Manhattan Project would not have succeeded. It is interesting because he did not want to do the Manhattan Project. No, he was one of those guys that was real excited to go kill people. He was like, said me to Europe, I want to go fight. I'm done with this shit. And they're like, we actually have this thing that is going to end the war faster than anything that we do when we go over to Europe.

Like this weapon is going to end it. And he was of the school class where he says like weapons don't end wars, people end wars. So he was, he actually started this pretty kind of skeptical that this was going to even do anything. Well, isn't that interesting? They're both right. Yes. Yes.

Well, I mean, he saw it as a demotion. When he was given the job, he had access to $600 million per month. And that was all just to get projects done. But of the outset, the entire budget for the Manhattan project was the relatively smaller sum of 100 million. Oh, how's he ever going to make ends meet with that? Hey, it's on his personal salary. It's 600 million per month versus 100 million total for an entire project.

It's relatively smaller. Okay. Yeah, but they're going to David Lynchum, which is they're going to show up because when David Lynch did season three of Twin Peaks, he just told them how much more money he needed each week. And they were like, what? And so he did not pay attention to the creation of those worlds. Most powerful bomb is a lot like season three of twin.

There's a lot of other comparisons I'm going to make today, which episode eight included an absolutely wonderful atomic bomb explosion using crack in the world. Oh, yeah, I'm gay for the fucking bomb. David Lynch eats the same lunch every single day. Yeah. And yes, he does. And actually for that episode, the music that's played in the background of season eight,

when the atomic bomb is set off season three, eight. Uh, what that song is is I think it's called like La notney something for the victims of Hiroshima and it's supposed to sound like the screaming of everybody who died all at once. Well, isn't great. That's a great gift to them. They're going to love that song. It's called out. Out.

Well, basically groves figured that he'd finally pissed off too many people in the Pentagon. That's why he was being put on the Manhattan Project. And again, he was the guy who was responsible for building the Pentagon. See, a lot of people in the military saw the idea of an atomic weapon as a little wacky. Partly, this was believed out of ignorance, and partly it was believed out of arrogance. Basically, they thought, no stupid fucking scientist is going to make my Navy obsolete. Not the Navy. Well, therefore, a lot of military brass figured that an atomic bomb project was an almost guaranteed failure. So they took a brilliant, yet unlikable manager and sideline them, thinking that the experience might teach him some humility.

But with a guy like Groves, spiked is the strongest fuel you can give him. To most people. Yeah, that's pretty powerful. Oh, indeed. He therefore threw himself into the Manhattan Project completely. And if he hadn't, the entire operation would have died on the vine for good or ill. Hmm. A contrary to the belief that the project's name was randomly chosen, General Groves followed

the custom of naming Army Corps of Engineers projects for the city in which they were located. And as it happened, the first offices for this project were on Broadway and Chamber Street right near City Hall in downtown Manhattan. There you go. Oh, look a boy. Look at my cow. Yeah, started with 12 people and it was thus christened the Manhattan project. It's kind of like when people named their kids after where they were conceived. Oh, yeah.

They ever meet somebody named like Chevy dealer. Yeah. Yeah. Outside of Coney Island. You remember when it Coney Island? It was drunk Johnson. Now, if this was going to be done right, Leslie Groves needed a head scientist

who wouldn't just research atomic energy, but who could actually build an atomic weapon. Paradoxically though, he chose a theoretical physicist named Robert Oppenheim. Mr. JR, Oppenheim, he's in there and his main lament. Doesn't anybody care about learning? I don't think they do. I wish that they would numbers are better than people.

Well, you're going to give them two really big examples to learn from. They're growing up. Oppenheimer was remembered as being a, quote, unquote, repulsively good little boy. I could be better. Repulsively good. What does that even mean? You know when someone is so good, you know, they're conniving. Well, he was a genius.

He was truly a genius from a little as a little boy and he just, he loved learning. Yeah. Well, later on, he would say that his childhood did not prepare him for the fact that the world was full of cruel and bitter things. But again, like the forementioned Michael Jackson, yeah Michael Jackson gave him in his words, maybe like also like Michael Jackson, no normal way to be a bastard.

That's what he said. And that he just threw himself. He came from a very wealthy family that escaped from the didn't they came from Germany. They moved to the Upper West Side in New York City. They were very well off. He was educated all the finest schools. He was a very spoiled boy. He sounds like a bastard to me. No, look, he looked at him as their precious, very bright son. They said immediately as soon as he showed up in school, I started reading American Prometheus, which is a really great

book, but it's fucking too long. Yeah, it's 1200 pages. That's a lot of pages. And but the whole, he didn't know what to do. He literally came out brilliant and immediately was like another to the other kids because again, he was born a dweeb. Yeah, he's a Martian. Yeah. Okay. I'm your friend.

Well, while earlier documentaries about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project in general, they gave a more idealized version of Robert Oppenheimer. He's a strapping sporty man. But huge cock. Heavy balls. Well, he was one of those guys who's Lanky and tall, so you know, he actually probably was pack 50, 50 shot, 50 shot of like a big, gross dick.

I am more inclined to believe five foot seven and under. That's how they've been able to stud. Um, they do have longer ding-docks. Technically, I'm giving you a compliment in your people. more inclined to believe five foot seven and under. That's how they've been able to stud. Um, they do have longer ding-dots. Technically, I'm giving you a compliment in your people. I'm fine. And then six foot nine and then grow, just growing like a potato. Yeah. They all like oddest tool. Oh, five foot seven and six foot eight. Oh, yeah. Well, later biographies relented and pegged up in Heimer as a frail, frequently ill child who spent most of his time collecting minerals and writing poems. Did none of you like looking for barium?

Here we are. A mineral zest with minerals. What do you mean? How do you call it? What do you do? Got it. No, it's rocks. It's just rocks.

He collected rocks. Jesus. He's sad. He was sad, child. I'm pretty certain the Dan Ackeroid based a lot of egon on J. Robert Oppenheimer because you remember who was the like when he scrapes the gunk off a thing and he says, this is for my collection of molds and spores. Like, it's the same shit.

That's what he does is a hobby. He could like spores molds and fungus. That is better than minerals. Well, they're pretty rocks. They're very pretty rocks. Great. I hope you guys like basalt. I'm going to have a bunch of take some now.

But Oppenheimer grew up and he subsequently killed it academically at Harvard. And he went on to become a highly respected, yet unhonored theoretical physicist. No Nobel Prize. That's weird. It's like one of those things where to me, I imagine the Nobel Prize is this massive crazy thing, you know, but it's kind of like how when you work and show business in Los Angeles

and you start to see like how the Emmys and all this up are like work functions. Yeah. In that world, the Nobel Prize is just more like, yeah, well, Jerry got one. They literally are like the way they treat it. They were like, it's a thing that you're supposed to get that is supposed to show that you are now like crazy. Also, it's also part of a massive cover up because a lot of people that have wanted

or wore, wore mongers, he didn't want, he didn't get it. Yeah. Well, think about it this way. Oppenheimer not having a Nobel. It's kind of like Leo never getting an Oscar. Well, he finally did get it for the revenue, but he didn't really deserve it for the revenue. He was better and more. Yeah. Exactly. It's not it's more of a life so achievement. It was. It was made more of a thank you Leo for your contributions. Well, by 1942, when Leslie Groves was on the search for a scientist ahead the Manhattan project, Oppenheimer was 38 years old and teaching at UC Berkeley. Now, one fellow professor at UC had a harsh view of Oppenheimer's overall vibe,

so that he was always nervous. He moved with an odd, half jogging, arm swinging gate. That's not nervous. That's motivated. You gotta get there. That's strange guy. Yeah, he always cocked his head just a little bit

to one side, and one shoulder was always slightly higher than the other. But then he always got his big hat on. Like he's got his pork by hat because and I know why now if you've seen his hair, yeah, it's a wiry. He looks like Frankenstein's monster. Well, his hair sticks straight up. I am, again, another point to, I think it egon is based on J.

Robert Oppenheim because the hair goes straight up. Well, this professor went on to say that Oppenheimer looked simultaneously like a young Einstein and an overgrown choir boy. Oh, great. What a combo. Also had horrible teeth, had a constant cough, chain smoke chester fields, and was emaciated because he just forget to eat.

Oh, okay. So you just describing yourself in 2012? We really did. The only thing that changes the cigarettes. Yeah. Hey, I got my teeth fixed. I know. Yeah. I just like the made up, the made up is you.

It's just nice. It was too nice to make up other things about it. I don't even, I don't even, you look great. You look great. We love it. Sandra Bullock, that was the worst Oscar ever given out the blind size of the world. I have so much for my citizenship. That's terrible.

All she did was literally go to a black neighborhood and people were like, I can't believe you did that. And it's like, you know, simple live there. Oh, yeah. Well, because he was emaciated, Oppenheimer's body was a great embarrassment to himself. He was therefore rarely naked. Which never nude. Yeah, which surprises me because the Oppenheimer movie just got an R rating for nudity and sexuality.

They're throwing tents in there. I guess so. Because he has the ocursion, we're going to learn about J. Robert Oppenheimer. He's like, yeah, he's a nerd, but later on he's going to flourish as a man who fucks and fucks pretty regularly. So he had his, you know, he had several affairs and I'm pretty certain that's where the sucky sucky comes from. And I want to really graphic sex scene. What do you remember?

I want is I want a loop of Killian Murphy's orgasm face. Just him. You know, he's so scary. He's so scary. I can't imagine him hovering over me. And I'm sorry, it just scares me. Yeah, I see blue eyes is going, I'm going to come. He's weird like little, uh, very scary.

Little Irish accent. I think Oppenheimer smells like the inside of a Ziploc bag after you take a baloney sandwich out of it. You know, you will get it. Yeah, he was fairly dapper. Well, just like Leslie Groves, Oppenheimer was an absolute genius. But as opposed to Groves, Oppenheimer was generally well liked just so long as he liked you. Yeah, I was watching the trials of Robert,

uh, Jay, Jay Robert Oppenheimer and the way they all talk about it. He's like, yeah, he was like smarter, whatever, but he was kind of me. Like, you see all these like scientists being like, you're just jealous. Yeah, just jealous. Well, if he didn't like you, with you were talking, he would start doing this weird German accent

like this affective accent. And he would go like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, until you shut up. And then when you shut up, he would destroy your argument before you even made it because he knew exactly what you were gonna say. He was right.

He was right. Well, that was the thing. He said he often flex. He said he had a hard time not berating people because he was so much you were gonna say. He's right. He's correct. Well, that was the thing. He said he often flex. He said he had a hard time not berating people because he was so much smarter than everybody else, which you can, you see him blossom into administrator over the years. Yeah, I really understand this guy.

I understand where he's coming from. No, I know. Sometimes I'm so odd, but Gisels just share intellectual. The number game. The force. He just says the word number game. And I know what he means. But he seems to know what he knows. I know what he means by the number

game. You don't know what I mean. I think I know what you mean. I think you mean that if you tell people they're stupid, often enough, you're going to be right. And you're going to be right. Sometimes broken clock is right. Six a day. It's really what you're saying. Yeah, absolutely. Good work. Good work, boys. Now, Oppenheimer grew up a political, but around 1936, when it became impossible to ignore the horrible things were happening to Jewish people in Germany, Oppenheimer finally became interested in world events.

There was also a much more personal reason why he got in a politics. Oppenheimer got horny for a communist. Yeah, but he didn't eat it. He didn't eat it. He didn't eat it hard because you know the best part about a communist. They always share. There you go. I really got him.

You really got him good there. You really got him good there. There's a lot of factors here. Like this is an extremely, this is one of those like extremely complicated subjects in history that everyone kind of tears apart in and out and again and again. Oppenheimer is a communist. Well, how did he get into it?

There's fucking communist. Well, there's a lot, that's what I was saying. If we were writing a book about this subject, we were writing, if we were writing American Prometheus, we were writing America Prometheus. We too would have a 200 page sequence where we tried to chart how the fact that Oppenheimer got really into the Spanish silver war. And on this side, that was anti Franco and they got a bunch of common.

He grew up with no friends because he was such a nailing. Later on, he gets the college. He gets into sort of like, well, we now call hippie-ish movements worth the time, which like closely linked to communist ideals and thought patterns as opposed to now. But he literally became like super interested in it because he finally got friends. So on one level, you can kind of see, yes, obviously he cared about politics and he cared about people and he wanted to get involved in most humanitarian projects at the time. We're all on the left side versus the right side, but you could also probably say the last podcast version because we're not writing American

Prometheus is the fact he was trying to fuck and he was finally amongst amongst a cool cigarette smoking Communist people talking a cool things in the scene. I believe that would be the human element Absolutely and through her Oppenheimer started hanging out with communists He didn't really accept or really even understand Marx or angles. But he went through Dascopital. That's what they're all saying. Well, the fact that he was the only person in those rooms

that read Dascopital because he was also interested in philosophy and religion. He will which you comes up time and time again because of his mystical nature. But it's still, it was like communism light because he's still kind of you. It's like, oh, these are things that can help an American help society. But it was not really about what was going on in Russia at the time. He had to break it to him. He's really going to do something anti-communist. This is all, but then they immediately put him on trial right after the war.

There's a whole guy. Oh, yeah. He destroyed his whole life. Yeah, he gets cut up in McCarthy as a pretty fucking hard. But back then in 1930s, Oppenheimer just thought that commies were a good hang, which they are. You just got, well, you got to leave the party. Well, sometimes it's a good thing.

You got to leave the party when they actually start talking about communist, because that's when it just starts getting no fun. Well, I love our communist listeners. We have a lot of them, but you do tend to lecture. Yes. But what I do understand is a lot of reading to do. The capitalism you just show up and you got your McDonald's like you as long as you show up every day

as a man drew McDonald's, you're fine. You know, they're not bringing back the Irish milkshake. You know the Irish milkshake. The Shamrock Shake. The Shamrock Shake, they haven't done it in years. I think they said it was racist or something. No. Look at this.

It's American to shit green. Oh my God. But I supposed Oppenheimer did hang out through the conversations because he eventually met and married a communist named Kitty. Kitty had been previously married to an American communist party official named Joe Dalat, who died volunteering in the Spanish Civil War. Apparently he was a commander, but he wasn't a well-liked commander. And during a charge one day, he got up, he ran out there. Men just didn't follow him. He got shot and killed. Follow me guys.

Follow me. Oh, shit. It reminds me of Jenny. When she was dating Mary Moon, your back path, the party. Yes, when she was marrying that, you're back path apodized. Yes, when she was marrying that very mean, mean match, dating them and it was abusive. But he was a protestor too, though. So it was very complicated.

No, it was not complicated. You were an asshole. How does that in any way relate to this? It doesn't. Because Oppenheimer, because he was just the number scale. Just say the word number scale. Wait, you didn't say something that related to Jena. You, he just got lost.

He just literally he got something. He was like something like so, like, first come. That is for us. For us go because you say brain, brain, brain, what's the name of scumps say? What is it? Jena? Jena said, all right.

Let me just say in the shot. They've been talking for minutes. They're assholes. They're ass right now. No, no, no. They're assholes. Like the man who was beating up Janine, who also took advantage of his special needs, man. Hey, she was smart. No, I'm gonna be a smart man. No, no, what love is.

No, no, no. I mean, that's not the time. You don't have to join the club. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when it came to Oppenheimer's allegiances, communism was really more of his wife's thing. For Oppenheimer, as it was for many Americans, everything changed when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

And when he was given the opportunity to beat the Nazis to the bomb, he jumped. Oh, yes, because he also, because of his connection to the Communist Party, he actually met people that were in the first round of concentration camps at Doc Hau and got out. And so when he heard that, this was like, these were all the ex-factors that got him involved because he really was like a peacenick. Yeah. Like, he did not want to be a part of this.

He believed that politics were disgusting. He did not want to have anything to do with it. He just loves his science. But the Nazis were the single most unifying factor in modern time period to get everybody all together on one page to build an atomic bomb. The Nazis got three X's on X factor and they're out of here. Yeah. Now on paper, Oppenheimer was a terrible choice to have the Manhattan Project.

Oh good. He had no experience leading a large group. He had no experience engineering a project because he was a theoretical physicist. His wife and his brother were communist. They didn't want him. Now, and as opposed to so many other candidates, Oppenheimer didn't have, as I said, a Nobel Prize. It's interesting. I'm a theoretical powerlifter. Yeah, in my mind, I lift a lot away.

But could you write an extensive paper on powerlifting a teacher class on powerlifting? Yes, and have it actually be helpful. Yeah Then for it to be helpful. Yeah, please do pick the shit up Open down up and down up and down up and down Times three shut the fuck up sounds like a regular Richard fine Complex Alligorical teacher just say numbers game Richard fine. You can read. Bullies complex. I mean, I just said some stuff. I know it's just allegorical teacher. Just say numbers game.

That's all you got to say. Yeah. Yeah. Powerlifting is a numbers game. And that's a number. Yeah, because it is his numbers. I know that. Pick it up.

Up and down up and down. Down times three. Shut the fuck up. Richard fine. Amen. So when it came to why groves chose Oppenheimer, he did it for the same reason he did everything. He had a gut feeling that Oppenheimer was the right man for the job. Say he was fucking right.

It was a Fuppa feeling. It was a Fuppa feeling. I feel it down on my Fuppa and it's going down on my toes. I also was brought in, right? So I want to happen to him, who's old buddies, who's the guy who invented the cyclotron, who wanted Nobel Prize for building the cyclotron. And so when they started these very serious meetings,

which was how do we figure this out? He's like, you gotta meet my buddy, Opie, which is what they call him. This guy is a fucking literal cross the board, genius. He's a half a communist, but he does it. And they're like, all right, so he brings it into a room. His first meeting and he nails in that meeting, what Werner Heisenberg bobbled the fucking the years before of he made a fucking formula right there to tell them how much a uranium 235 theoretically would be

needed to build an atomic bomb. And he was really close immediately. So they're like, oh, he might actually be kind of necessary for this. And then he kind of like build himself up, but he was campaigning to be in charge of it. And everybody else were like, well, he's a fucking communist. He's like, he's going to be a spy, but they just don't know. Actually, it was way more of the students. Oh, is that something? But you know, on the end, they're like, well, actually, it was way more of a student's. Mm-hmm. Oh, is that something? Yeah. But, you know, on the end, they're like, well, he's too fucking smart. Well, we so fucking smart.

Yes, indeed. Well, the weird thing was that Oppenheimer was about the only person in the Manhattan Project who could actually get along with Leslie Groves. In turn, Groves had a high opinion of Oppenheimer, saying that he was the right man for the job of building an atomic weapon, because Oppenheimer knew about everything except sports.

That was his main problem. He couldn't talk sports, which I understand. I'm trying to bridge the gap to the straight men. I don't know what the sport was. It was just baseball. The baseball. And candlestick bowling. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's hard to talk to straight men. It's still what do you say? You do it all the time. You do it all the time. You do it all the time. That's not true. That's only, but the others, the others when you meet them out there. You're talking about men.

You said the same like shit, Kiel O'Neill, you was bad at free throws. I learned to say stuff like that. And then they go like, oh, you know, and they all say a bunch of stuff. And I go, yeah, yeah. The goat, the goat in me.

He's over his man. Hey, these guys, they're not even allowed of dribble anymore. Wow, just like Oppenheimer. Now before the enormous infrastructure needed to make an atomic weapon was built, groves and the people holding the purse needed to see that such a weapon was even possible. So Enrico Fannie, he headed up a project that aimed

to create their first nuclear reaction. And he did it on the squash courts Underneath the bleachers at the University of Chicago. Okay You got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got it you got I gotta know that. You gotta know that. You gotta put in a pasta water. Yeah. On a dust of sauce. And then also, I need a bit of water. I'm trying to put some ethufa in there. Now you're French.

Now you're really French. That's the rare me. Call me when it's boom boom time. Wow, likes spaghetti indeed. I can talk about many subjects. I know you can. Just like Robert. Now, if you'll remember, physicist Walter Booth of Germany's Uranium Club,

he believed the graphite couldn't be used to produce nuclear reactions. So he had therefore moved on to the far more expensive route of using heavy water. The Americans, however, had known that graphite was the better option. So they got to work on what was called a pile. Oh, yeah, buddy. That's where I come in. I honestly, that would be Kisels one true contribution. We had a project. A pile. We do it like make it. Wow. What kind of pile? REEK! You want a bit pile?

UGH! Get you a bit pile. Yeah. Yeah, that's a number. It's a numbers. It's a number pile. Yeah, that's a number pile. We're using 771,000 pounds of graphite bricks.

The scientist spent 17 days building an egg-shaped mound, 25 feet wide, and two stories tall, right there on the squash court. Damn, that's huge. Adorably, Enrique Gaffermi, he made calculations with instruments that he'd named after Winnie the Pooh characters. Like, piglet, grew, and have a lump. It's gonna lead to the destruction of all of humanity.

It's me, I'm fair in me. Oh my God. He'd been reading Winnie the Pooh books to teach him English. Cause he didn't know English. It's me, a fermi. Oh my God. He'd been reading when he the poop books to teach him English. Because he's a sociopath. He Christopher Robin, he made all the different names. Yes, Christopher Robin was abused. Because they say, yes, Christopher Robin, he more or less. He don't know about that.

He make up the creatures to talk to because he is my, he separate from the abuse. No. Yes indeed. Now, within these graphite cubes, where uranium slugs disperse throughout like... No, no, no. Yes, Christopher Robbins.

If anything, he's guilty of so many horrible things. That's why he lives in the woods. You know, that actually do have that theory that he buries the bodies in the woods and then he pretends like when he the poo is around there and piglets around there. He's a serial killer. It's a numbers game. It isn't. Well, uranium slugs were dispersed throughout these graphite cubes, like so many nuclear raisins in graphite loaths. People say we can't teach. I took that analogy. I stole that. That was from the making of the atomic bomb. Oh, it's really good. The author used that, yeah,

nuclear raisins and graphite loaths. Can we change it to chocolate chips? Yeah. Great. Now it's ours. Fantastic. Yes. Each little bit contributed to the main goal, which was to create a nuclear chain reaction on a small scale. If they could do that, then they could move forward with the work of making a weapon that could produce a much larger nuclear chain reaction on command that would release enough energy to destroy a city, IE, an atomic bomb. Well, because that's what Jay Robert Auburnheimer discovered early on. That's what he said. He's like, as soon as the math came out, what everybody said was like, oh, so basically, you follow this nuclear vision concept and eventually yada yada

yada, it's gonna explode. You just let it go and let it explode. But this those who shows the kind of scattershot way, they started to build a weapon because Leslie Groves, who kind of set up all these areas all around the country, just kind of all in competition against each other to come up with stuff first. But just it's weird because it's like playful. They just dump in a bunch of graphite and nuclear bits in a thing and kind of seeing what the fuck happens with it when it really could have killed all of them. Yes, science.

Yes. Well, this is the different. This is when theoretical starts to move into practical science. But that's what Oppenheimer also understood early on. He said originally like, no, this is all going to be different. It wasn't like Werner Heisenberg. He literally was like, he had to figure out like, oh no, this has to work in real life.

Like, this is in a classroom lesson. Yeah, and this is how it moves. Absolutely, you want to make sure the mathematical formula is correct. Weird science, that movie, what if instead of that beautiful woman, it was China from the WWE, they created and she ripped her dicks off.

I mean, it looks like another movie, but I like it. Yeah, a fun. She's dead. I mean, but I the idea of it, RIP, I can be carried around by big woman. I know. Also the Iron Cheek just died. Wow. I don't get it a long time.

Speaking of spike. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Speaking of spike. Now, the danger here was that once the chain reaction in the pile started, it had a chance of going critical. And since they were doing this in the middle of, it had a chance of going critical. And since

they were doing this in the middle of Chicago, that was indeed a grave concern. I would ask my city council to just be like, did we sanction this? I don't think they were informed. Oh, my. So as a precaution, they had a dude standing by with an axe whose only job is only job was to chop a rope that would lower a huge rod of cadmium into the heart of the pile. And this would apparently stop the nuclear chain reaction. That's all that was it. Well, no, no, they have backup guys.

They had two dudes with buckets of water. Oh my god. But the water is not going to work. But the water was laced with cadmium. So they could throw it on the pile and and that would stop the cadmium, it stopped the nuclear chain reaction. They really should have given the guy a sickle. Yeah, they would have worked.

They're in big acts. Yeah. But in the end, the experiment went exactly as planned. At 3.53 pm on December 2nd, 1942, just a few days before the first anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the so called Chicago pile became the world's first working nuclear reactor.

And it sounds like something guy theory eats and grows up. Oh, he doesn't. They're also guy Fieri. By the way, put some respect on him. I never will. He ate raw eggs on an episode. Yeah, he does. He's because you don't know, but he doesn't like eggs.

I know that because you've mentioned it to hundreds of times. Also, the guy, Fieri doesn't like eggs. The Chicago pile. The Chicago pile. That's exactly who you want. Run in the football in the goal line. You can tell you have refrigerated eggs. His name was refrigerator, though.

He already had an nickname. No, well, I know, but this is the 40s. Refrigerator Perry is just a little mic. He's just a little, he's just a little cooler. Think about what Shaquille and Guignol would have done if he could have figured out how to change that free throw ratio. Yes. Yeah, that's a really good point.

Now, some stories paint this as a moment of elation. It's a moment where the boys broke out a bottle of Kiyani. We got to celebrate this. It's one of the most impressive scientific achievements in history. Now there was indeed a bottle of Kiyani involved, but the scientists sat and drank it from paper cups in silence. And afterward, physicist Leo Sillard solemnly shook Enrico Fermi's hand and said that December 2, 1942, would quote, go down as a black day in the history of mankind. I have to say, this is a certainly a most despise, meatball.

Yeah, this forgetty looks like it's got some sweating. But now that scientists under American authority had achieved the sort of self-sustaining chain reaction needed to produce an atomic weapon, Leslie Groves was given a massive, on almost unlimited budget to get the Manhattan project off the ground. See, as Fermi and Syllard put it, if a bunch of Americans could build a reactor on a fucking squash court in Chicago, then surely geniuses like Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg were miles ahead. Therefore, the Manhattan project was given an immediate sense of grave urgency. In reality, Heisenberg had stalled completely, although by appearances, he seemed right on

track. Oh, yeah, he did it on purpose. So he was in getting sent to a goddamn concentration camp. Oh my God. I can't even imagine when they, when they walk in and you're just like, no, we're heavy work. Oh, it's the heavy shit. I, I pulled up my shoulder. That's my, that's my problem. I,. Oh, I pulled up my shoulder.

That's my problem. I hurt my shoulder. I didn't think the heavy was. You better come up with frozen pizza or something. You better have something created. See by June of 1942, six months before the Chicago pile succeeded, Heisenberg was running the most sophisticated nuclear fission experiments

in the world. He'd already built three piles of his own. Oh, yeah. Wow. Now, Heisenberg did not achieve a full nuclear chain reaction with any of these, but each machine was a vast improvement on the last. And based on his progress, one scientist in Chicago

estimated that Hitler could have an atomic bomb by the end of 1942. I think we all know Hitler was obsessed with different kinds of piles. Oh, yeah. Mostly ones running this chest. Yep. You like that, boo-boo? Mm-hmm. That's what they say.

That's what they say. I heard that. I heard that. He's a real bad guy. Weird guy. Well, to put that timeline into perspective, if those projections were correct, Hitler having a bomb by the end of 42,

he would have had an atomic bomb before the allies even started gaining footholds in Europe with the end of 42. He would have had an atomic bomb before the allies even started gaining footholds in Europe with the invasion of Italy. He would have had it a full year and a half before D day. Well, have you guys read the biography on Hitler weird guy? It's crazy. It's kind of funny. They actually got a, got a, like 10 years. Oh, yeah. It's mostly about his painting career. It's a four page book. It's crazy. Well, in other words, if Hitler had the bomb by the end of 1942, the allies would be far

beyond fucked. Yes. And wow, that would be crazy. Now true question, though, it being that Europe, quite tiny, can you really use the bomb on your European enemies only without getting fall out in your own goddamn backyard. Absolutely. If learned, well, what did we know? What do we know about the Nazis? They didn't really even care about themselves. We know that one of the end plans that they were going to do was gas bomb everybody. They did that was already in a contingency past the atomic bomb. They were ready to kill everybody. No, 1942, that atomic bomb that's going to London. They've already taken Paris. They don't need to bomb Paris That shit's going to Moscow. That's going to New York. Yeah, that's going to New York

Washington DC like there's plenty of places far beyond Germany itself even far beyond the fucking elite like because that's the thing They're taking the Leibin's round But if it gets a little oradicated for a couple of years, yeah, fuck it. It's a thousand year right They can wait it out. That is why we have so much room. Yeah, one thing we learned about New York is they handle it all very well. Oh, yeah.

But thankfully, Heisenberg's lab was actually a deadly mess. Again, anyone with a bright mind and even a semblance of a moral compass had fled Germany years prior. So all Heisenberg was left with were a bunch of dumb, dumb Nazis. Yeah, shit, shit, fuck company. Oh, no.

In the first of many catastrophic lab accidents, an assistant was preparing an experiment and fumbled the powder of uranium. No, no, no, no, no. That produced a 12-foot tall explosion of flames that badly burned the assistant. The assistant's ordeal however was not over. Not too long after hydrogen leaked into an apparatus containing uranium and heavy water and who else did they send a deal with it but the dumb fuck assistant. I can't feel maybe we should try Gregory. I feel like Gregory could go in because he's in the half of my mouth. He's got shot to see

melting some of the fire. Yeah, let's see if he dies. Again, the powdered uranium exploded. Yeah, he's a champion. Yeah, he's a champion. This guy is having a bad day. Who's covered in hot flames? They said hot flames were poured upon him. I got to get out of this internship. Yes indeed my friend. Wanting to help the other Nazi assistance brought buckets of water to put out the fire. But they were also, they were also dumb, dumb Nazis because burning your radium has a habit of reacting explosively with water.

Oh, yeah, making it to work. It's funny. And so when they tried putting out the fire like it's a fucking three-stoogeous sketch, the apparatus exploded like a grenade and through hundreds of metal rivets. Yeah. This time the flames were 20 feet high. And those in the lab who weren't killed by the explosion were seen running in terror. The firefighters who showed up couldn't put a dent in the plays. So they had to let it

just run its course for two days like a fucking tire fire. So tell me, Vona, how was the experiment this weekend? Man. Yeah, you're just going to want to let it breathe itself out there. It's not the audience. They've 18 periods. They had the flames are doing Zaver. So they've been doing all that.

Well, technically it was better because the first flames 12 feet, second flames 20 feet. I mean, the next thing you know, the explosion absolutely. You're doing a great job, Bill. I know your bird.

Every time I see you, a different part of your body is bird. There has to be another assistance. Oh, I think it does it. Ah, buddy, your nose is falling off. I know you don't say I thought you don't think I don't feel it. I don't think I don't feel it. Man, we're bad scientists, huh?

But perhaps what was interfering with Heisenberg's work the most with the demands and trappings of Nazi society itself. Like it is with any government built around a cult of personality, fealty had to be paid to Hitler and the state constantly. So Heisenberg found himself required to attend endless state functions and lectures to talk about how there were totally smart people left in Nazi Germany. Absolutely tremendous people, nothing but the best teams. Everybody's doing everybody's pulling together. Tremendous people, tremendous work. Tremendous work all around

me. Oh, why am I not busy working? Because it's a numbers game. It's a numbers game burnt up all of your staff and crew and you know half of yourself. As a result, Heisenberg's work on nuclear vision was completely stalled by 1943. At the same time, what a total epic fucking failure. Oh, yeah, he was very happy though, because then he caught him out of the spotlight with his with his bosses. Yeah. 1943. It's done. America keeps believing for two years. Yeah. That he is miles ahead of that's the power of playing like you're behind even if you're in the lead. It's what you I love your term. We always talk about it under promise over deliver. That's what we do. At the same time, though, another access power had shown interest in atomic weaponry. And these people just happened to be the very same on whom the first nuclear weapon would

be used. What do you mean these people? Oh, Nazis? Yes. No, I mean Japanese. Oh, no. Yes. By 1942.

That was bad. Yes. Yes. By 1942, Japan had also been making progress on atomic research. See they knew that America was very likely working on an atomic bomb themselves, because as Henry said, once the math was out there, everyone knew that it was possible. And the Japan and the Japan. I didn't.

Because you were making it look so bad. The whole world was just awesome. It was just like, you know, again, Bob Hope didn't. Yeah. He said to the other comedians at that time, you know, again, Bob Hope didn't. Yeah. He said to the other comedians at that time, we knew he had, they didn't know I did. No. Vodaville was completely unaware.

Absolutely. Nuclear fish. And so Japan, they projected that they themselves would need at least 10 years to produce an atomic weapon. Wow. But this didn't really bother them, because Japanese scientists believe that neither the United States nor even their allies Germany, they didn't believe that neither the United States nor even their allies Germany.

They didn't believe that any of them had the resources or the industrial capacity to produce a nuclear bomb before the war ended. No, this is another one of those massively debated, history, questions of history of why, because we talked a little bit before the show, we're like, why did they think that? And we, we like, you know, like, how did the Japanese are like, why did they not think that we wouldn't be able to do this thing? And it just seems like it's because they were very

kind of closed off to our culture. Well, Japan just massively, massively underestimated America. Like they didn't, like they thought, seriously, with Pearl Harbor, they thought like basically, like there was an oil embargo. I mean, there's a lot of history in the beginning. But I can put into a sentence. I can boil it down. Like there was an oil embargo. I mean, there's a lot of history. Yeah, but I can put into a sentence. Yeah, I can boil it down like there was an oil embargo on Japan that was the United States was a part of because Japan has very few resources of its own. So the Japanese figured all we got to do we can bomb Pearl Harbor will take out America's entire Navy all at once and we can start to get oil again.

But what there you go. It's a numbers game. It's a numbers game. One. Yeah. But what they didn't figure out was the fact that America could just build another navy and we could build another one and we can build another one. And that's the other thing about it is that they did not realize that if you pop America on the nose, we will not stop until you are all dead. Yeah. That is why that's why it's important. See, that's the birth of the American war machine that you all and other countries get to experience all the time. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome for that new. You're welcome for that nuclear weapon on your country soil.

You are welcome. You're welcome. You're going over in Ukraine, by the way, and I'd love to see it in action. That's the power of the pent up pentacostle. Yes. There is so much hidden rage. And this is still the time of America and idealism, right? Oh, yeah. So they're just like, you don't follow this.

Oh, no, this is actually before the idealism part. Technically, you mean American exceptionalism? Yes, yes. Oh, no, this is, well, we are isolationist at this point in history. Okay. Yeah, world war one, they woke up asleep and dry and they did. That's what, that's it. That was, those were Hitler's exact words.

I gotta go. No, in chapter seven, a weird guy. He actually does. He says if you mix water colors with your tangible sol, you can make a really good river. Kitsons common. He's really just a numbers game.

He just never know. It comes up. That's exactly what Rush Limbaugh said. I think about that with the bird cage. Japan, because they didn't believe that America had the resources to build an atomic bomb, they diverted all the resources they may have spent on atomic research to rate our technology. Because that's the other thing too, is that again, Japan's problem is always resources. They didn't really have access to a whole lot of uranium. So atomic research was kind of a waste of their time.

Yeah, it just doesn't seem like a good build. And honestly, they're so svelto, but they're most of their waters very thin. Yeah, we really nailed that one. How do you want from me? And no, radar was actually a great use. Oh, no, radar was a great use to the resources. Absolutely.

Yeah, they really should have put more into what do you call it? Codes, because once America broke the codes, it was all over. I've done left right left right left right left right. I'm a virgin and then you have all those lives in contra. A B A C A B B, you know that. I actually never knew that. What's happening? Contra up down. Am I?

Up down down left right. Left right. It is me. It's a nerd alert on YouTube. This is a nerd alert on YouTube. Up, up, down, down, left right, left right. AB start 30 lives. Contra, that's fine.

A Larry Bird. Really knew how to talk some shit. Yeah, he actually did. And so as it stood, America believed itself to be in an existential race towards atomic weaponry with its two greatest enemies. When in fact, it was only racing against itself. Wow, that's crazy psychological. But when it came to competition, general Leslie Groves was determined to win hard and win fast. Now Groves research the best ways to build the massive industrial complexes needed to produce fissionable materials and to develop a working mechanism to harness the power of

the atom. Groves is biggest problem with the outset was deciding which research path to take towards a nuclear weapon. At this point, remember there's like multiple ways. There's the graphite method, there's a heavy water method, there's all kinds of ways that we could get to the bomb. But the thing is, you got to figure out, but how do you make a thing that it goes explode? Yeah.

But this problem was solved in a way that only America could have done it due to our enormous resources and the fact that the war wasn't anywhere near America. As one man put it, the atomic bomb couldn't be built unless we turned all of America into a factory. And in the end, General Groves did just that by saying, fuck it. Let's do them all. Yeah. And so they just threw every single thing that they had at the project.

It became, that's what they're all very interested about is like it was normally they had a deal with low budget, no parameters, but eventually you get to a point where it's all parameters and they had the exact whatever amount of money, anything, but also it puts a lot of pressure on people. Yeah. When you have to do thing like, you know, whatever you want, do it. Yeah. It reminds me of what happened with McDonald's in the milkshake. Yeah.

The shabber. I'm attempting to get more milkshakes sold quicker, but you know what they did then? Why? They got a multi whipper. Mm. Yeah. And they were able to whip three milkshakes at once. Richard Fein.

So there you go. Diversify. Mm-hmm. Is this a Ray Croc thing? No, I fucking hate Ray Croc. He's too American. No, he was an asshole. Yeah, you're American. Jenner. Now, although the Manhattan Project only employed about a dozen people when it was just some office downtown in 1942, there were 150,000 people working towards an atomic weapon by the time we set up the first bomb during the Trinity test in July of 1945.

That's half the population of Cincinnati. You know, it would be interesting to see their faces when the bombs do go off. Oh, yeah, they were, they were like, hey, I'm really happy. It wasn't half the actual population of Cincinnati. Can you imagine that just what they did? They went to Cincinnati and they're like, we're gonna break you up in ones and twos. They're ones. You're working on the atomic bomb. That's how that chili came about. But when it came to which scientists were going to be invited to the big show out in the desert, Robert Oppenheimer traveled across the country to personally recruit the people he wanted, a sort of atomic dream team. Yeah, magic Johnson. Very very. I say, I promise James. It looks funny. Oh, if you get Isaiah, you don't get MJ. That's how we know. That's the problem. This would have been such a great time to just trip fucking

balls and be a spectator. If we could just like have our hunter as Thompson moment, just watching this shit live. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah god. What a nightmare is this begins the I don't know Interesting begins the work together Come on come on. It's work together. Yeah, and the movie this is this is this is this part is gonna be like a montage with like And use it like a lot of Oppenheimer on trains inside back before the I've been back before the picture of a puppy and like taking a frown, purples, like doing the weirdo. He's like, face, you see, you knew him. You want to come along with me and my hand trip.

And he's just like, you got to dance, I know you know, you know, you're a bitch. Well, I'm just happy they're going to make it really cute. Yeah. Yeah. Well, initially Oppenheimer estimated that he would need 50 scientists and 50 technicians to head up four divisions, theoretical, experimental, chemical, and ordnance. Oh, fuck his organs. It's how to get it, dude. It's the bomb itself.

Oh. But Groves said, fuck you, Oppenheimer. That's not enough. Triple the number you think you need and go get them. Wow. Get any scientists that's not tied down. Yeah. Well, you have to take them out of my basement, though.

Ha, ha, ha. The most scientists were convinced to come work scientists that's not tied down. Yeah. Well, you have to take them out of my basement though. The most scientists were convinced to come work on the Manhattan Project off the assumption that the Nazis were getting close to the bomb. Right. But when a scientist hesitated and getting involved in war at all, oh yeah, a Oppenheimer made sure to share the utopian vision that the atomic bomb would actually end war forever. Do you imagine how incredible it would be if we could teach bombs how to dance? It'd be nice.

You know, again, it's a little bit correct. I wish a bomb could kiss. Yeah. And then they'll teach everybody how to love and to die. I do love that. I do love that. Now also it's Pride Month, so they are more open-minded this month when they explode. Yes, they are.

And there hasn't been a war since 1945. Not a nuclear one. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, bro. You don't want to fall in them traps, bro. Yeah. I don't want to go no tiger cage. No, I got to tiger cage. You see them tours at home? Yeah, because I want to go visit it because it's absolutely incredible. I guess it's true.

I guess it's absolutely incredible. Well, where is it? It's in Vietnam. Oh wow. It's the Vietnam, it's the Vietnamese. It's the Vietnamese. It's the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese, the Vietnamese, the Vietnamese.

When they did for war and they was, man, they, well, you can do a lot with a nail in a wood. Oh, you really can, you really can. I fall on a Vietnamese like street food vendors. Oh, yeah, that's good too. That's a real nice. Bye from North Korea. Now, while Oppenheimer was recruiting scientists, Leslie Groves was building the infrastructure. In the end, Groves oversaw the construction

of three secret towns built almost from scratch scratch and he did it all in two months Geez now by design these towns needed to be isolated and that went double for the town that was gonna be responsible for actually Constructing and testing the bomb itself. You know, it's interesting is that's against all of the actual That's against the sense of the time, because they're all like, no, no, no, we need these next to big cities because that's how you get all the shit that we need for the experimentation. But then they're all like, oh, so we're going to test this atomic bomb right outside of Chicago.

Yeah. You know, like it's a really like, Pazy huge target on Chicago. Oh, yeah. Well, for the test site, they needed a place with good transportation in order to get all that shit there. They needed a local labor force and they needed a moderate climate for a year-round construction and outdoor experimentation. Most importantly, though, Groves made sure to your point, Henry, that it was an isolated site

so nearby communities wouldn't be adversely affected by any unforeseen results. Ooh. I mean, try explaining nuclear, like radiation sickness to a fucking congressman in 1942. No, you mean here being pussy's? I mean, Jim inhoff just brought us snowball into the white house into the capital year. Yeah, it's a couple of years back. No, no, no, you can't, we can't compare anything now because they used to have like thoughts and shame and pride. I don't know. And dignity.

Yeah. Some of them did. I wouldn't say strong, Thurman had a lot of dignity. No. No. No, you're right. All right. Well, therefore, Groves chose the site of a former boys prep school in Hemis, New Mexico

about 40 miles northwest of Santa Fe. And he recristened it as Los Alamos. Well, that was also Jay Robert, Obamacimus, old stomping grounds. Well, he loved the desert. He loved the desert. And he loved ride. And he loved going out and be like, you wouldn't believe just how goofy a cactus can be. I'm good friends. He loved this area of the world. And he knew the Alamos area and he was like because that was one of his I mean again, it's a the things you learn about him where one of his big issues when they first found a spot Well, he's like you can barely see the beautiful mountain ranges from here

Now will be inspired yet, but they were like but eventually the fight there was like one of the pluses of the new area when they got to Los Alamos where he's like and you can see Beautiful colors is a rain. He's like, and you can see beautiful colors. Is it? Is it? Yeah. Red. Nice. It can be a beautiful place.

Sure. Why not? Blue is the sky. Clouds are white. Yep. Yes and did. The land of Enchantment. Some cactus is actually like to lie down.

It's a numbers game. It's a numbers game. It's a numbers game. That's what comedy is. It really is. That's true. I saw someone adopt a cactus. Huh, it's on Instagram. Hmm.

Wow, it has to be real. There it is. Some cactus is actually do like to lie down. Well, lost alamos. What's just gonna move on? Well, lost alamos. Well, lost alamos was only one of the Manhattan Projects three so-called secret cities.

And even those three, those weren't the only Manhattan Project sites. Besides Los Alamos, code named site Why, the other. Why? Because we got it. I guess so. Yeah. Why?

Like the letter. Not Why? It's not like Cafe Why? I didn't say it while you're looking at me. I figured it was fucking Why? I was wondering why. Why? Like the letter? Not why? It's not like cafe. I didn't say it while you're looking at me. I think I knew what's fucking why I was I would be because of the Joker. I was doing a homonym based joke. Right. Well, the other two main sites were in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hamford, Washington while smaller sites were located in 13 other cities across the United States. Also had a couple in Canada and one in England. Now Los Alamos alone would start with a population of about 3,500 in a town that already

included a school, a laundry, libraries, a movie theater, bachelor apartments. Yeah, barbers. They didn't want that mall be they separated the women men and the women except for the ones that were married. Yeah, they're barbers, two restaurants, a vet, and vet and a bar. And this was all there when they showed up, although they did also vastly underestimate the resources they would need. It was not fun to live there for the first few months. They were living pretty fucking rough. But it was interesting because then Robert Oppenheimer promised all of them. I would definitely make a restaurant that you can all go on dates with your wives too. And it's true. Where they literally made

a cafe for the single men. And then they made a take your other scientist wife on a date place within Los Alamos. Now so watch the recent history on TGI Fridays. The first one to do the horseshoe around the bar. So people would mingle as they go to their seats. Oh, interesting. Wow. Well, by the time the bomb dropped, it is interesting. It is interesting. Well, by the time the bomb dropped in 1945, lost Alamos, the population would have doubled to 8,000.

Okay. And a couple of years later, it was up to 10,000, because work did not stop on the atomic research after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And these people were just asexually multiplying, right? All the chemicals in the air. They were like, they were like, they were like,

they were like, they were like, they were like, they were massive issue because they people were having babies. People were fucking and having babies. And they were, and it was like, at some point,

as they grow up, had to cut it all off. He was like, there's too many fucking babies being born in the middle of my atomic bomb project. You know, it's a point. Yes.

But the thing about the atomic bomb is that even without it, the allies were already inflicting airborne destruction in Germany on a never before seen scale with bombing campaigns like the evocatively titled Operation Gamora. Not good. Oh my goodness. We know that story. Yeah. Turn it to salt. Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. With Gomorrah, the Allies used incendiary bonds to reduce the industrial capacity of Germany's war machine, and they started with the city of Humburg. See, as opposed to simple explosives, most incendiary bonds in World War II contained small sticks of white phosphorus called bomblets.

Cute. Cute. They scattered themselves around the target at a high altitude in advance of the actual explosive bomb. Whoa, that's funny. Cute. They're little bombs, little helpers. Yeah, it is the home of the hamburger. And once the big close and say, look, no, it's hamburger Germany.

That's where the hamburger was created. Interesting. Well, once the big, I think it was actually up to like road islanders. It's an interesting. Once the big bomb hit the ground, it would ignite these bomblets. Yeah, starting fires so hot that they could melt metal and rock. Metal, cool. That's crazy. Those fires would then spread indiscriminately to the rest of the city where they would meet fires caused by other incendiary bombs. Oh, you think you're meeting all of their friends? It's a hell of a day to be a fire.

This would create firestorms so hot that the pilots dropping the bombs from thousands of feet above, they were nearly suffocated by the heat. Wow. But that was of course nothing compared to what was happening on the ground. Yeah, there was like a, there was more like a fire festival. A weird guy. Now, the fire bombing of Dresden is the most infamous of these operations due to the Kurt Vonnegut novel, Slotter House 5. Oh yeah. But the nighttime British fire bombing of Hamburg in 1943, which killed 45,000 civilians, mostly old people, women and children, that was just as bad.

Why were you let me talk about how cute all the bombers were? I was in too. I didn't do it. I'm like the me cute with the flames and stuff. Why you say that? Why didn't you stop it then? They name it something like cute. Any time you have a sickle in the end of any or it's like, let's get a kid. It's a bomb. It's bomb. Yeah. Let me do that. Yeah. 45,000 innocent people. It's about to get a lot worse. According to accounts in the making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes, people would be cooked in pools of their own melted fat as the heat turned sealed shelters into kilns. And those left on the streets became small,

blackened bundles. There was one dude who was like, I kind of like to have a way out taste. small blackened bundles. There was one dude who was like, it's a bit of a grammar. I kind of like to have a, I kind of like the way I taste. I've got to like the way I taste. This is not cute at all. Is that happening? He's in a puddle of his own fat. He's eating his own fat.

Yeah. I can't wait. Yeah, we're doing the pretzel. I know. As you can get a scoop of my liquid, you get high as hell. Well, if you weren't burned or melted, you die either from the hurricane force winds the firestorms created or You'd asphyxiate because the fire would suck up all the oxygen from the air

Sometimes the firestorms would create atmospheric conditions that would cause brains to burst out of people's temples brains to burst out of people's temples or cause their innards to burst out from underneath their ribs. They're entire. I have to. You never want your last word. You never want your last words. We're like, why I needed that. I, it's not cute.

You know, it's not, but you did make it cute. Why do we need the other bombs? It sounds like these bombs are doing a really good job of being like naughty. Yeah, being real bad. Yeah, and well, and of course, all of us would pale in comparison to the fire bombing of Tokyo. That would happen, I think, a year or two later. But while this does prove that the fire bombing of cities, whether it is Hamburg, London, or Tokyo, it proves that we're always horrific. Oh, yeah. It also showed that the men in charge during World War II

had no issue bombing civilians. No. After all, when it was all said and done, 38 million civilians died during World War II, which was incredibly two and a half times the number of military personnel killed. And 38 million is a conservative estimate. You can see a fucking what?

You know, really, I mean, obviously, you know, defy the Nazis, but like, but stupid human history. But why do the Nazis do it in the first place? You know, like, why do the Japanese do it in the first place? Fucking point. It's very, it's, it's, it's humbling. Because you think about like how much destruction was caused in such a short period of time. And what they had, it kind of scrambled to do and how the Manhattan, right?

It's so crazy. This whole story is just this time period. Yeah. They came out of this all fucked up. Like now we kind of know about like trauma and PTSD. You think of it? These guys were fighting in the just war, like the quote, quote, good war. Yeah. Great.

Great. Yeah. Yeah. 38 million. That's what about a tenth of the population of the United States. Yeah. I guess they could have done it in Alan Parsons, Nevada, the Alan Parsons project. I mean, which also very controversial for a lot of people. Justice controversial as the Manhattan Project.

Now, when we're talking about numbers, it only made sense when it came to the Manhattan Project that security was going to be a top concern due to just how many people were involved. I could see that. Interestingly, some of the security practices that Groves adopted during the Manhattan Project still persist to this day. And the Project's secret budget and lack of legislative oversight

made it America's first large scale black budget program. Never mind, most of it was taken over by that group, the S one committee that was just like FBR, just kind of said, you're in charge of this thing. You're going to go and do this. And it was just a group of guys that you wouldn't be, you wouldn't know. Yeah.

I mean, there was just a bunch of famous guys within the government. They were super, super powerful and they were the, they didn't have to answer to anybody but themselves. Yeah. Not surprisingly, many of the people grows recruited went on to have extensive careers in the CIA. There's a lot of this is why to me, this subject is extremely important to know for people that are into stuff that last podcast also covers, where you're like, all of this information

of the Manhattan Project helps feed my conspiracy theory mind as well, because you start to kind of see how they run something of this size and how it's, which you'll find impossible to keep secret impossible because the entire world was also doing the same thing at the same time. And the Manhattan Project had 150,000 participants within it. So everybody knew who was going on. They talked about the little town. Everybody more open is like more of an open secret in certain areas of the country. Lost Alamos. The people when they started when they arrived, right?

The whole town was like, yeah, they're building some kind of atomic bomb. Like they literally knew something. They didn't know atomic bomb. But they knew building some kind of a weapon. They did meet up man in a pork pie hat with a cigarette in his mouth who was like, hello, my name is Mr. Johnson. Yes, we're doing some experiments here. And we were like, no, you're super famous,

nuclear scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer. You're also greatly overestimating the reach of a famous scientist. Well, the kids, they talked about this, but there was two kids that were like, he was famous. He was on like, he was on newspaper. He was like, people knew about this guy. It was just different.

I'm also greatly underestimating how smart people used to be in how much they used to read. They used to read stuff. Yeah. And the news, when he showed up, he was like a celebrity. So he was like, they're doing something secret. Something, yeah. And all of a sudden, all these.

It's like fucking great day to be a kid with a couple of friends. Get on your bicycles. It's the real strange thing. Absolutely. It sounds awesome. Yeah, all of a sudden, all these fucking European dudes are just showing up in small towns and New Mexico. We don't see all those wonderful colors of the New Mexican background. Yeah. And then of course, you get those new restaurants.

It must be a good day to be in the last element. It was this place called the Owl Cafe that made a thing called the atomic burger that was just outside of town that they used to go go eat. It was a green chili burger that they all go. I love green chili. I love green chili burgers. I do. I don't need my spice and my burgers. I heard it.

Or that she got a man. How do they know I have gas? Super. The day. Well, that's the thing about these security matches. That's the thing about all the CIA shit, all the black budget shit, the security measures in no way worked. The Soviets had no less than two active spies within the inner circle of scientists, the top of the top secret. And that

wasn't even to mention all the other little spies peppered throughout. Because remember the time that we, they were our allies. So there were a lot of people, the spies, quote unquote, spies truly involved here were some of Oppenheimer students who he brought in to be like assistants and people who'd work on various experiments. At the time, they had sort of a naive American-centric communist idea that like, no, we need to share this information with our allies. It's like they're trying to help this humanitarian effort. We should be going and helping them fight the Nazis right now. But it shows with the sea. I was watching a great interview with the CIA guy who talked about like, he's quote, unquote,

human tactics that you have to do to in order to flip people to give you information. And what they do is very human things. This guy, he, like this one guy was talking about how he was trying to get information from some country. It sounded like he was Iran or something. He became friends with this guy that was working on some military project and they started talking and at some point he floated. He's like, you know, you can always come to America.

And you know, we can hook you up. And he was like, no, I'm not right. But then the CIA dude remained actual friends with this guy for 10 years, just waiting for the day when his shit head boss, if very human, he got the guy got sick of his boss. And he's like, I'm sick of doing this. And he's just like, I got a great way to help you. You just come with me.

And so it's like, I'm helping you. Now it's just, it's this kind of thing. It's like what the cops say. About like, let me help you, which is like never real. And so these guys got flipped as little spies off of their, just straight up, you know, naivete. They looked at them being like, they're like, you know, they played on these, these things. and we learned from the KGB and the KGB learned from us.

And we created a fun espionage group family. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, when it comes to the Middle East, when they use text them something very funny, they text back, hello, H-A-L-O-L. He hasn't heard a single thing in minutes. Hello, AJ LOL. He hasn't heard a single thing in minutes. He's again. He's said,

I'm gonna be like, Oh, I should have called. I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like,

I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna he said, it's like, yeah, man, wanted to work with us.

You got sick of his boss and then he came over here and worked with us. That's how it works. Sure. Well, the worst part about all of these spies, like all these guys working for the Soviet Union and feeding information to the Soviet Union, this was what McCarthy and all the rest of those assholes used when they were like, even one communist in the state department is one to many, you know, shit like that because it had, it had happened. Like this one dude, uh, crowd was happening. It was presently happening. Well, one dude, Carl Fuchs, like, you know, McCarty would say, like eight years ago, Carl Fuchs fed information to the Soviets and they

got the bomb two years before they should have, you know, it's all because it happened. But, you know, of course, America, we're known for overcorrecting. That's a good term. That was the 20 year war that we just did in the Middle East overcorrected. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But Groves did his best to keep things secure. As far as getting into Los Alamos or any of these three secret cities went, each one was perimeter by barbed wire, almost no one had a telephone and everyone had badges and drivers licenses with ID numbers, but no names. It was white badge.

Yeah. And they were the white badges, because Oppenheimer was also breaking a bunch of rules, saying like all the scientists were the only way for this to work is we need to have a weekly meeting where everybody's working and everything in this space comes together and we talk about it and grows. It's like, uh, no, because it's literally why we do things covertly the way we do that. Well, it's about to separate compartmentalization. Yes, but up and hammer is like, do you want this done now?

Or do you want this done five years from now? And so they did. So they did. They basically said, okay, fuck the rules for now. But again, it would all deeply punish Oppenheimer in the future. Oh, yeah. No. And everyone at Los Alamos, they all had the same address,

PioBox 1663 in Santa Fe. And interestingly, anyone born in Los Alamos during the Manhattan project can prove it because even birth certificates issued from that location at that period of time listed Pio box 1663 as the address. So funny. You could just mail shit to that. Yeah, I guess you have to. I guess so.

I'd mail them with some erotic magazines, floppers. That's always a dolphin. Dolphin themed. They definitely need to be jerked off scientists. Or they do. Yeah. Oh my God, this is the horniest. Because they have the egos of an actor,

the face of a scientist, and then the desire of just some prisoner. They are very horny. They are horny. There was a lot of honey. A lot of beavers getting snacked on. Yeah, yes indeed. Now, when it came to compartmentalization of knowledge, Leslie Gross was the only person

on earth who had total knowledge of the whole thing. He controlled the pace, the priorities, and the direction of everything major. Wow. In regards to secrecy, the top priority was to keep knowledge from, in order of importance, the Germans, the Japanese, and the Russians. Because just about everyone in the military brass had pegged the Russians as our next big bad

just as soon as World War II was over. Yes, it was everybody knew that the Russians were the next enemy except for all of the people that found this literature and college at the time period, which is what Oppenheimer says later on in when they are grilling him, when he's basically saying, it didn't seem so serious before the war. It was just ideas and we were talking and I actually never thought about a world controlled by Russia. I just thought we could learn from these from all of these philosophies.

I've learned exactly as soon as you're not like because he wouldn't give up other names. And then also he was a man by the name of Shavale that was a French professor. It was Auburnheimer's best friend and he was a card carrying communist. And he did a thing where Auburnheimer was trying to keep everybody separate, right? Because he's like, listen, I'm already getting enough heat here. Everybody considers me a communist. And it's just because I got thin tie on at this point. Right. And I went to a couple meetings back in the day, but this guy comes up to dinner and basically says, you know, you should sell over information to Russia, not even understanding it. Everything's wired for sound. And so this little boss handed remark and both his wife, Katie and Oppenheimer

was like, no, that's treason. We're not going to do that. But because the question was even asked, he was immediately fucked and everything was on. Everything was recorded. Yeah. Well, Groves also wanted to keep knowledge of the project away from other nations so that the US would come out of the war with the strong of a position as possible. The only other people who knew we were doing this were the British. But Groves also wanted to keep the knowledge of the project from Congress and to a certain extent the president, so none of them would or even could interfere. Basically, when it came to the Manhattan Project, FDR went with the policy of Senate and forget it.

Oh, yeah. Well, why not? I mean, that's what it is. That's what you do to him. You're set him and forget him. There you go. He's the Ron Papil of President. No, President Spare.

Not at all. But perhaps the most consequential of Leslie Groves' security directives, which would heavily influence later decisions on how the bomb was dropped, he insisted that the bomb be a surprise, thus gaining the maximum psychological effect. I mean, I just say one thing, can we put a smiley face on the bomb?

Maybe we could put a little tail on it. I mean, it was cool. Hey, there, hey, there, whoa, there. It's definitely called fat man and little boy. Yeah. I thought it was, was it little I mean, it was there. Hey, there, hey, there. Whoa, there. It's like, we got fat man and little boy. Yeah. I thought it was, was it little boy? Yeah, little boy. That's, they were named after characters

in the Maltese Falcon. Bat man, little boy and thin man. I love when they let that dog on the back of that falcon. I eat him. People say I was made in the lab. Kisse was made by God. Thank you. You know what's interesting,

the dog in Never Ending's story isn't he a bit of a Maltese fault? He is. He's a flying Maltese. He is a massive Maltese. I feel the shame. I feel the shame for the audience. Also, the fucking story didn't.

Yes. Never ending story. Well, one of these credits that... No, it's about the idea of a matchinations is never the never ending story is that it is very sad movie, but they never earning stories. The story that we all share in the world of imagination. Yes, we did get hit hard with some sad ass movie. But it was good for us. Now the kids just have the fun get recession and yep, they got that movie cars, which is all about gas prices. Yeah, the hopelessness of having no future.

Yeah, that was cars can't reduce. All of the shows were about that. But all the secrecy and military protocol clashed with some of the scientists who had a hard time operating even within the roles of the academic sector. And some of them treated security so casually that they are lucky they did not get shot before the whole thing was said and done. It's what this teaches me is again, that conspiracies work if they are small. You must conspiracy happens in choke points of information that then is just shatters

everything. You basically create an up to a shield against any sort of objective look at the information inside of the conspiracy by keeping it between three people. Right. You make it a small deal like, you know, JFK, the secret service fighting over his body when he's leaving because we're see was happening in that moment. Yeah. And that's when it moved on.

Covers happen very fast. Very fast. The secret. Yeah. The secret service saying like, do not let anyone examine this body because then they will find out we accidentally killed them. And then you look at MK Ultra, which is also a sort of another size of this, right? This size of quote, unquote, conspiracy. But again, everybody knew that we were doing it by the way that they hid that was instead of making it out loud. Like the Manhattan Project did. They just

did it real quiet and just gave money everywhere and just if you touched in a VAT MK Ultra money, you're now MK Ultra. Yeah. Well, for an example of a scientist not taking security seriously, physicist Richard Feynman once found a hole in the security fence surrounding Los Alamos. He was a trickster. Yeah, he was found a hole in the security fence. He's out for a stroll. Oh, look, there's a hole. There found a hole in the security fence. He's out for a stroll. Oh, look, there's a hole.

There's a hole. So just for fun, he checked out of the base, snuck back in through the hole and checked out again. Yes. You wouldn't believe what I was been doing. I was walking in a fun hole. And then I walked back. Richard, find him.

You got it. I went in through the hole. I'm gonna go back out through the hole. Who does Richard find me? I have gonna go back out through the hole. This Richard Feynman, downplex ideas, some full explanation. Simplify, he didn't go back in the hole. He got out of the hole. You don't know what I did in that hole.

Now you went back to the gate and you checked out again and he kept just going around and around and a circle until someone said, hey, wait a minute. You know, Richard, I don't want to tell you but this is what I call mouse and around. Have you seen any Richard Feynman? I should send you him explaining fire. You would like Richard Feynman.

Yeah, that's what he does. He entertains us boobs. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't think it. But he was completely ignoring the fact that a paranoid, trigger-happy soldier could have very well shot him in the head, thinking that he was a foreign saboteur. These scientists are getting to casual. Man, I'm mousin' around.

No, you're fucking deadmousing around. Like the DJ. Yeah. Now, Enrico Fermi's nuclear pile on the squash court in Chicago, that had been a proof of concept to show that a nuclear weapon was possible before everyone went to the trouble of building the towns

and the factories and the laboratories. But what Fermi built on the squash court was nothing compared to what the Manhattan Project constructed in the more barren parts of Washington state at Hanford site, codenamed site W. Oh, come on. I know. I like it. Some fun. Yeah, the death room some great. Yeah. Why and W. Mr. Shitfuck's pancake fuck. But they're at site W and hampered Washington almost 50,000 people mostly brought up from the South were hired by the do pump company to build the site. Although very few of them knew what they were actually building.

Some thought it was a sandpaper factory. Yeah, that sounds like a real answer. Yeah, well, they said sandpaper factory. Others who had to be fucking absolute morons thought they were building FDR's Winter Palace. Sounds like some of them have been educating themselves on YouTube. Oh, wow.

In reality, though, Hanford site was a part of general grove's scattershot strategy. See the Hanford site in Washington was charged with processing plutonium. Just in case plutonium was the element needed to use a bomb. The site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee meanwhile, was processing uranium for the same reason. Los Alamos meanwhile was the central site. It was tasked with constructing a practical bomb that could be dropped from an airplane to destroy a German or a Japanese city

should the need arise. That's the keys being able to be dropped from an airplane because the way they first kind of posited the atomic bomb is that we'll put in a ship and we'll float a ship because close to the fucking, the edge of the land, like where the where sure as possible and then set it off. But apparently that be like bad. That'd be bad because you make a big like tsunami. It's like a hole. There's like a lot of issue. You're gonna you're gonna wake up Godzilla. Oh yeah. Oh speaking of which

you got me sleep. I'm snoozing here. Absolutely. Speaking of which I got one word for you Fukushima. Remember how much radiation that introduced into the ocean that we're still fucking dealing with? Mm-hmm. That's why the fish are chasing so good these days. I like a little radiation with my two. Sure.

No, in Los Alamos, the atomic bomb was nicknamed the gadget, probably because talking about the bomb day and night would have been both a security risk and a bit of a bummer. Definitely a security risk because they, they were really getting kind of like loose with it. Yeah. Well, to the point of it being the bomber, the scientist working on the bomb knew exactly what sort of effects it would have.

There is no ignorance to be pleaded here. Okay. Besides producing an explosion that would vaporize anyone caught in the blast, scientist guessed that any person within a thousand yards of the explosion point would suffer severe psychological effects. And not like super cool, incredible Hulk effects either. No, no, but honestly, I wouldn't like a bunch of incredible Hulk's walking around. No, no, no.

We're talking. It would be fun if you were the Hulk, but also very difficult. But it's a curse. Everyone was the Hulk. It is a curse, yeah. Yeah, it's very much a curse. You know, originally the Hulk would come out at night. What's the sound of one hand not happy?

There it is. That's the sound when you work as talk about comic books that I'm hearing. It's a very simple origin story. Yeah. Now, we're not talking incredible whole shit. We're talking melted innards. We're talking bodies decomposing from the inside out before the affected victim even died.

Kind of wish I died for. Yeah, that would have been nice. They also knew that the area would remain highly radioactive after the initial blast, slowly and silently killing anyone who just happened to wander into the area. The other country's working on the atomic bomb never talked about radiation sickness. Yeah. And this was one of our most closely held secrets.

Yeah. It's the fact that this thing is going to make whatever land is underneath this thing uninhabitable for like a hundred years. Yeah. Well, depending on which type you use, which, yeah, which element you use, which is certain elements have hot longer half lives. That's the whole point of Dr. Strange love. Good. The 40 md. But then they also, the idea of how it explodes like, because that's the tricky part, which is in order to make it so that we don't have to literally make sure no human

lives here again. It has to explode above this site and not on the site. Well, now they poison our water with a bunch of other stuff too. Yeah, isn't that exciting? Well, while the plutonium produced at Hamford would be used in the first atomic test, the uranium used in the first atomic bomb was produced, you're gonna like this one, Ben. Site X.

Yeah, see that's cool. Yeah, but it's still just a letter. Yeah, but it's still Site X. Site X. Yeah. No, X is a cool ramp. Yeah. It's a cool letter.

I was an Oak Ridge Tennessee. They also, they see that a five-man team, inventing like Vot if a skate was in one line. And they're like a sword. Is a roller sword. A roller blade. No, that's dumb. No, that's dumb. No, that's not a roller knife.

That's a roller knife. Well, it's SiteX. Four separate methods of producing uranium 235 were being researched simultaneously, each one costing hundreds of millions of dollars. The most effective process, however, involved the contraption called a Calutron, which required a 44-acre mile-long, four-story high plant that required hundreds of miles of air-tight piping all welded together just to make it work. Wow, I think that was actually just put into the new Omnibus bill.

That's a little political humor. That that was stripping into the debt ceiling bill. Make the house bigger. Well, interestingly, when these cow utrons were first built at UC Berkeley, they were only allowed to be used by men with PhDs, but with the war on. We got nicks. Physically warm. right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you got too close. This of course resulted in accidents. On the worst end of it like a whole white rabbit outside. This is the lab. Yeah, the magnet, of course, immediately caught the plate in such a way that the guy carrying it got violently pulled across the floor and got pinned to the magnet. It's a fucking cartoon.

Yeah, someone else is like, turn off the goddamn magnet. Turn off the magnet. And then quite coldly and somewhat cinematicly, the scientist in charge said that the war was killing 300 people per hour. And if I shut down that magnet, it's going to take days to restabilize it. So you weigh the lives of thousands of people versus that one man. And besides, he looked over, he's like, the guy's fine. Yeah, he's going to. Yeah.

He's like a real refrigerator. Sounds like that guy was mousin around. Yeah. The scientists said, look, look, he's just stuck. Get some fucking two by fours and pry him off. What are we doing? Until I'm not to be such a fucking idiot next time. I did definitely see this being some comedians grandfather. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Now, amusing incidents aside, it was obvious that the Americans were fucking killing it with the Manhattan Project. And we were the only ally doing so. The British had their own attempt going with project tube alloy. So dumb bad. Bad. Tube bad. Bad. Bad.. Bad man. Bad name. Oh, God.

But it was having a hard time getting it off the ground due to the constant German bombing. Therefore, European scientists were getting funneled over to America to work on the Manhattan project. Although none had quite as big of an adventure getting here, then famed Danish physicist Neel's Boer creator of Atomic Model we still use today. Oh! I am a bit of a difficult man! Yes indeed!

See Bohr was Jewish and when the Nazis invaded Denmark he was one of 8,000 Jews to be smuggled out of the country by the Danish underground. Cool. Bohr ended up in Stockholm, unaware that the Gestapo had ordered Boar in particular to be seized at all costs. Boar, however, was not a man known for his discretion, nor his common sense. No, he's a scientist. In fact, it was a small miracle that Neal's Boar even survived childhood, much less Europe

during World War II. His brain was for thinking, not for doing stuff. You can say the word all of us could share. Now in Stockholm, Niels Bohr was unwilling or unable, really, to lie low. And things were made even worse by the fact that Niels Bohr was easily recognized because his head was abnormally large. I love history. It's my smart.

I love history, man, because it is. He just had too big of a head and not be found. I believe in that. You actually heard Boris head is really good if you slice it thin. I actually think they monopolized the entire meat industry in many parts of this country and I think it's a substandard meat product. We've already got into this inside stories. Please don't.

But you agree with Marcus that Boris has average at best. Oh yeah, I do agree with you there. I know know I wish I could find a place where I could get sliced ham that wasn't Borsan. I don't know why the fuck are one of you who do a single thing. We have to move on. But yeah, the thing that matters because that is both incorrect.

Yeah. Well, Bors was also incapable of shutting his mouth or remembering that he was actually in hiding. All right. For example, whenever the phone in his Stockholm hideout rang, he would lunge for the receiver before anyone could answer it and say, Yeah, this is born. He's born.

I'm a certain scientist. Yeah, I'm in Stockholm. And so after only a few days, the Swedes knew that if Bohr stayed in Stockholm, he'd either be captured or killed by Nazis before the week was out. So they arranged for Bohr to be sent to England via a stripped down fighter plane called a mosquito. Now, operations like this take a lot of instruction, especially for a civilian, but Bohr

just yapped and yapped through all the instructions that were supposed to help and survive. I just feel that there are many ways that a trombone can be played. This the nose. Oh, I am a scientist. Look at me. Everybody listen. I'm this guy. And the operation was became even more dangerous when it was discovered that they didn't have

a helmet that was big enough to fit. It's really. It's crazy. Think about that. helmet that was big enough to fit. It's really, it's crazy. Think about that. That's how big your head is. No. But because Bord didn't listen, he didn't know that when the mosquito reached altitude, he was supposed to use an oxygen mask.

Oh. Therefore, in mid-babel, while they were going up in the air, Bord very suddenly passed out. All right, sometimes fear that mental burles are too much. You don't like it. That's a great way to fly. And the ball of sleep pass out. The British crew thought they'd accidentally killed one of the most brilliant minds of the century.

So funny. But when they landed, Boer suddenly woke up alert and chipper, saying that he just had the most wonderful nap. It's just nice to take a break. It is. So Boer was extremely important to the allies, but not just because he was brilliant. He'd also been privy to extensive conversations with Werner Heisenberg about nuclear physics. Borg, of course, though, he had retained nothing because he was a fucking awful listener.

But he was like, but I remember, no, you better be good at it. I know that. Absolutely. Well, all Borg could remember was that he and Heisenberg had talked about uranium fission and they talked about the morality of researching nuclear reactions during wartime when it was certain that such research could be used to make weapons. So you remember on with it. Well, when the Heisenberg went to go talk to him about it and basically said, Hey, you

should come, the Germans are definitely going to win. You should be working with the Germans and Neil Bohr was like, I will never, I'm Jewish. Yeah, right. It's not going to work out. No, but even so, just based on these conversations, Bohr was convinced that the Nazis were actively working on an atomic bomb. And he thought that this was big fucking news, but he showed up in England. And they said, that's what everybody.

Yes. What is this big suck? You made a whole town. Yeah. So they showed up in England. They're like, guess what? We're also working on an atomic weapon. It's called tube alloy. He said, no, no, you're going to Merck and you're going to be working on the Manhattan project. Wow. He's going to miss all the full English breakfast that he could have had breakfast in the fucking world. But the trip to Los Alamos was of course another frot journey. He almost immediately forgot his code name on the train ride to New Mexico. And haven't forgotten his code name. He immediately began using his real name and introducing introducing himself as physicist Neil Boer. Oh my name is physicist Neil's fuck.

I'm strawberries. No. Hello, name's physicist. Please, no. We got to give him a name that he'll remember. Something fruit related. What did he like? Cheels.

Cheels. Meals. There you go. Cleals. You're a cleals now. And he'd also talk to anyone and everyone about nuclear fish. Have you heard the thoughts of bomb? Yeah, we're really making good heads.

Way. His absolute mind and this was so chaotic that he kept accidentally escaping the armed guard assigned to keep watch. Eventually, it got so bad that Leslie Groves himself had to travel out to a scort board the rest of the way. He pretty much just held onto his collar and said, shut the fuck up Yeah, you're coming with me now. Okay, but perhaps board's greatest treasure was a drawing

Heisenberg had done a Vinazi heavy water nuclear reactor But born the rest of the scientists they couldn't conclusively say that this reactor could be used to make a weapon What they did convince themselves of was the possibility that Germany had learned enough about nuclear energy to produce dirty bombs. Man, and dirty bombs at this point too are almost, I mean, obviously the atomic bomb is the biggest and worst of all of it, but dirty bombs ain't no slouch. No, no, you don't want to get messed around with by a dirty bomb. No, no, you don't. Well, these bombs, which were mixed with radioactive

material, they did not have the destructive power of regular bombs, but they made areas of effect deadly and uninhabitable all the same. Yeah, what, what, what's wrong with you? You're covered in mud. Yeah, dirty bomb. Really good. Well, that's great. But was that the one that you were thinking of and then you abandoned? But then you're there to move it out and try. You know, there's no, there's no moving in. A lot of people say I'm like Neil Bohr. You know, it's true.

I got a big L fucking head. Yeah. I sleep on planes. Great. But there's a part of them that thought that the atomic bomb was kind of like, well, at least the first wave of energy wipe everybody out quickly. And then the radiation sickness will set in. So they actually, if you was like, well, at least the atomic bomb, we kill you up top.

It's real nice. We're kind of behind to be nice with it. Now there was no evidence for German dirty bombs. But nevertheless, Manhattan Project officials had secret nuclear defense systems installed in quite a few major American cities. They almost deployed teams of soldiers with Geiger counters on D day in a scuddle plan called Operation Peppermint. See, no, that's fun. I like the Marisa Peppermint. Operation Peppermint. Yeah, they shipped out Geiger counters. They included all like that that's with the basketball brigade. It covered that one of the guys in the basketball grade was that's was one of

his jobs. Yeah. So that he had to go and try to check every bomb hole for radiation. Yeah. And also I didn't know that Mo Berg tried to kill Werner Heisenberg. Yeah. Well, we'll get to that next episode. Yeah. But of course, once we started thinking that maybe the Germans might use dirty bomb tactics, we started thinking about how we could do something along the same lines, maybe. And of course, that deadened us even further as to what we could be capable of unleashing upon civilians. Okay. At one point, Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi enthusiastically discussed using the isotope

strontium-90 to poison Germany's food and water supplies in a preemptive strike. Although Oppenheimer wrote that it wouldn't be worth it unless they could poison at least half a million people. This was a real plan. It was more of a, they, they, they later said that it was an academic exercise, but yeah. Now, they were in the Manhattan Project. Everything was an academic exercise.

It was extremely serious. Yes. All they got to do is get Monsanto on the case and the boys in for sure. Monsanto was involved in the Manhattan Project. That's why me and Neil Young don't like them. I get it. Well, these fears were of course only made worse by Nazi blustering, Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Garibels, always the troublemaker, he announced that Germany would soon unleash a revolutionary uranium torpedo on the Allies. Vivilve spread that uranium torpedo all over the chest of the Allies. Oh, yes I did. As we know, Germany was nowhere close to such a weapon, but the Allies didn't know that.

They were on track to produce an atomic bomb by 1945. They'd started work on it in 1942. That's crazy. Yes, but they were working on the assumption that the Nazis had been on a steady track of production since 1939. So they're shitting themselves any day now. They're going to have the weapon. Right. Now as Leslie Grove saw it, part of his job in constructing the bomb was to also actively prevent Germany from getting the bomb. Okay. So he and his deputies came up with a plan to deploy their own intelligence units,

made up of scientists and soldiers who could decipher documents and interrogate captured scientists. These guys were going behind enemy lines. Yeah, it's a crazy story. We will hide all of the secrets in hot sauce. There's no way the German can handle the hot sauce. I think it's important. We'll put it inside this case of salt. Oh, never see.

Well, the Germans have a little bit of salt in them. There's a little bit of salt in them. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and sent to the studio. It's like a nice light. It's kind of a barbeying hot sauce. It's very tasty. The little bit of a medium range hot sauce. Do they have it in the 40s? When was it made? Do my time traveler? No, not my time travel. I don't know.

I just don't think of Germans and hot sauce. Yeah, I don't either. There's all the hot sausages. Buddy, buddy. Hey, buddy. Oh, are you calling me on the phone? I'm here. I'm here on the show with you. Why are you calling?

You just did a phone call. We'll talk about sausages later. People don't know that you're doing it. Click. Well, we'll hear the story of the German. Well, we'll, well, we got damn it. Oh, yes. Well, we will hear the story of the intelligence units that are made up of scientists

and soldiers on the next episode. Okay. But meanwhile, President Roosevelt was starting to use stronger language when discussing the access power. We're going to rough them up. We're going to push them down. By 1943, he was saying that the only way the war would end was with the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Therefore, unconditional surrender became official Allied policy. And that word, unconditional would become incredibly important. Now, by 1944, US forces on the Pacific front were making serious headway in taking and holding the small islands leading to Japan, which were crucial to establishing air force bases to bomb Japanese cities on the mainland. Cool. Most crucial were the islands of Saipan and Tinian. Saipan was taken first in a horrifically bloody battle that resulted in the loss of 3,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Japanese.

This is one of those things where, you know, you listen to Marcus talk about these subjects. Sure. He likes them. You know, I find them interesting. He talk about the subject. Sure. He likes him. You know, I find them interesting. He's doing the fascinating. Or what is it good for? Marcus is intellect.

And he's kind of researching. I do I find it extraordinarily interesting. Yeah, but this is like you like the world that we live in because you enjoy all the violence. I also enjoy utopian sci-fi, so just Star Trek. Yeah. Star Trek is full of violence. Yeah, of course, but it's also. It's also stunned. It's utopian. Star Trek is utopian sci-fi so just Star Trek. Yeah. Star Trek is full of violence. Yeah, of course, but it's also...

It's all so stunned. It's utopian. Star Trek is utopian. Back on Earth, it's uto. Everyone's having a great time back on Earth. And even let Warf fucking control the goddamn controls, even if everyone else died. They absolutely let Warf control everything in deep space nine.

He became more of a commander. He got a lot more, well, he wasn't the commander. Why do you have to work so much harder? I'm not even doing a second nerd alert on that. You know that, they are not me. Cisco still commanded the defiant, but you know, but Worf did get a promotion when he was assigned a deep space nine.

And then Cisco did the thong song. All right, the thong song song. Now about 29,000 of those Japanese deaths have been soldiers who had refused to surrender under any circumstances. And that was pretty much the case for every single island the Americans took. Iwo Jima. Right. Goddamn. There's a reason why we talk about Iwo Jima to this day. Well, it is true, right? That this was their emperor was their God. So

this would be somewhat of an oversimplification on every, which it find they were very dedicated. They were. They were not a fucking tower. They were not going to turn back. They were going to surrender. I mean, from these massive battles, they would have thousands upon thousands of casualties. And you might capture like a dozen Japanese soldiers. It seems like a perfect storm of men's chaos. They don't want to surrender. And then we're like, you have to, you have to do this. And you'll, but there's, there's some gray in there as it goes, because as the war goes on and people start going hungry and they can't eat. Eventually that fever will go away. It will begin to wear off as they go.

Dan Carlin's supernova in the East really does talk about. It's incredible. It's build up extremely heavy, heavy details all from the Japanese perspective. Yeah, and he taught, and he has a great way of like explaining the Japanese, like to explain the Japanese mindset when it comes to warfare. Yeah, you say, yeah, he says the Japanese are just like anybody else.

Only more so. You get it? The more so that anybody else, I actually have a question. I have a question about their payment issues, Dan. Hmm. Where do you know you see? Difficult to get the episodes. Well, he's got, he's buying a pay wall because he deserves the money.

He works very well. And he's also, he's got to buy a pay wall because he deserves the money. He works very hard. And he's also trying to get an episode. I couldn't get the episode. He's also an old school guy. I mean, he's been doing podcasting since 2007. I don't think he's ever shown the top of his head. Never seen him in the head. He's got the him and the head and Oppenheimer are very, very similar.

Yeah. They're hat-based people. Yeah, Carl and so hat-based guy. He is. Yeah, he is, but hey, you know what? More power to him. He keeps his knowledge. Absolutely. Yeah. I wanted to listen to the episode. That's all. Yeah. that's the thing about Sipan is that 14,000 of those casualties, 14,000 of those deaths,

those were civilians. Many of those civilians were accidentally burned to death in civilian shelters by Marines, because the shelters looked almost identical to military bunkers. And it was policy, or at least I get, yeah, and it was policy to clear bunkers with flame throwers, and it was policy or at least I get yeah, and it was policy to clear bunkers with flame throwers loaded with napalm fuel as quickly as possible. That's just a way to clear a bunker. Is it?

Hmm. Did they not like care enough to really check? No, because they would if you opened up a bunker and you did not immediately attack the Japanese soldiers as fast as you possibly could, they would kill you. So, I mean, the Japanese, the Japanese were absolutely an incredibly formidable enemy. No, I know. I just feel like they could have checked a couple of houses and that first down so many civilians,

but it seems like it's complicated. Yeah, I'm not gonna say that it was justified or anything like that. And of course, it's bad. And of course, it's bad, but it's war, man. Yeah, and of course, this policy became much worse in Vietnam when they started burning down entire villages, and they started killing entire populations just but just in case they might be hiding a. And all these guys had to come back and immediately

by a microwave get married, have a shot. You mean, like, just immediately, immediately, that's a big old. Yeah. So difficult. But But also this was Dupont as well, right? They're the ones who created the flamethrower. Was that Dupont or J and J or can I say that to these mother fuckers? Yeah. I think it was, um, remember, um, Parker Bradley. No, Parker Bradley. They did.

Well, they did. They did. Well, to the point of them just coming back and buying microwaves and having families and all that, like when you talk about guys who took Sipan, they are in World War II documentaries. When you see soldiers talk about battles they've been in, like they're never, like they're just like, yeah, you know, we went in.

And that was the- And it just speed you was from Montana. We went out there. What you call it? He's out of Texas. He's what he said. He's just up my back. He's just had.

He's had. But Sipan rattled these dudes, and this is the reason why. As far as the rest of the people go, as far as the rest of the Japanese civilian casualties go, numbers vary, but at least 1,000 Japanese civilians killed themselves in advance of the American military because they were told that the Americans were coming

to rape, torture, castrate, and murder any Japanese civilian they found. So rather than be subjected to what sounded like hell on earth, at least a thousand people threw themselves from a perch that is now named suicide cliff down to the jagged rocks below. So many jumped that the waters ran red with blood. And what rattled the guys, what rattled these fucking marines was that they had to sail through a sea of broken bodies just to get to shore. Before we started killing them, like literally we are, we rolled into watching them jump off a cliff and fucking like, and it's just a lot, it's really fucked up because we didn't

do the rape torture and castrate, but we will sit you on fire. So at least there is now. Yeah, we will vaporize you and create action. Yeah. Okay, well, it doesn't look a very fun ride to me. No. But with the fall of Sipan, the war was effectively lost for the Japanese and anyone with half a brain in the Japanese military knew it.

Sipan put B29 bombers within range of the Japanese mainland and it was from this point that America was able to retake the Philippines from Japan three months later. After the Philippines were retaken, it was only a matter of time. Cipan was also important. The battle of Cipan was important because it changed the way the Japanese population saw the war. News of the loss got around, even though the Japanese government tried to keep it under wraps, and anyone familiar with the surrounding geography could see that if they had taken Sipan, the American forces were pretty much unstoppable. In other words, many Japanese started seeing that Japan was going to lose,

and quite a few of them weren't as sold on the idea of fighting to the last man, woman, and child, as America believed them to be. Because, truly, again, they're also starving enough. Yes. They've been on a in a full on embargo across the line. They can't get anywhere. They can't get anything. And so get slowly maturely fucks with the morale of a country. Yeah. That's how you do it.

That's really what I want to fuck with somebody. Civ six. Yeah. You raid. You take out the food. You take out all the production. It's the only way to do it. Because then they can't make the stuff anymore and they can't fight you anymore But most consequently the taking of Cipan was the prelude to the taking of the island of Tinian

Here Marines took the island partly by using 24 mechanized flame throwers a fix to what we're called Satan tank Satan tank man you give me one Satan tank. Yeah. Satan. Oh, Satan. Man, you give me one Satan tank. I'm going to get a lot of, I'm going to get a lot of this stuff figured out by the next that's the only one I thought you wanted to kill those are. No, but if I had someone say, it's not going to be good for the brand. No, it's under here.

Shoot. That's a fart. That's a fart. Right. That's a fart. But you know, it's interesting with the embargoes. Civilians are always the ones on the front lines of the ones who get fucked over. North Korea is going through a similar thing right now.

People are just dying in droves and it's part of the strategy of like make them super hungry. They will overthrow their government. But it's just kind of or they don't. Yeah, but it's just kind of sucks because again, it's just the civilians. It could. Oh, every flame. Every flame. It's just the fart gun.

But then you put a flame at the end of it. If you have a hot sauce, but after the alarm was taken, it was, it's just the fart gun. But then you put a flame at the end of it. If you have a lot of hot sauce. But after the Alan was taken, it was on Tinian that the Americans would build the largest air base in the world at the time. From there, America would launch a little plane called the Anola Gay, which would truly introduce hell on earth to the Japanese.

And how brave it was for playing to come out at that time period when the whole world was against it. It was named after his mother. His mother was named gay. Yeah, she was a massive lesbian. It's probably about that. It's with that hell on earth and the covert operations concerning the German atomic program

that will return next week with part three of our series on the Manhattan project. And again, don't worry. We're going to get to the sloughing. Oh my God. I am good. I like the skin on my body not to be boiling. And like the inner to be nice and 98 degrees.

Yeah. And you want to keep him out of the summer. And I'll say, well, it'll probably be episode four when we truly get to the sloughing. You know, yes. But just, just right though, sloughing's a common. It's laugh is a common. But again, very history channel, but I think it's important to learn this shit. I think it's as a person that like, again, if you're into woo, we will topics, we're going to get to aliens.

Don't you fucking worry. Well, you know what I was thinking about. It's all legit. It's the same mechanisms. I mentioned this on serious, the people of heaven's gate, man, if they were alive today. You know, they just fucked it up with the hail, Bob. They would have, this is their prime.

Oh yeah, it is. Marshall Apple White would, if he would have just hung on, what was that 15 years ago now? So like, more than that. You're saying 1997 is 15 years ago. Yeah, everything is 15 years ago to me. Yo, Can you imagine him just being like when they blow the, when they blew the four that one weekend,

when they blew the four objects out of the sky, just being like, well, that was supposed to be all right. Oh, yeah. That's a good way to keep pushing the humble. Like keep up the goalposts. And now he could just be going, see? See? See? See? And then everybody's just got to wait a little bit longer. And then a little bit longer and a little bit longer

And a little bit longer and then all of a sudden everyone's dead. There you go. All right, everyone Well, thank you for listening Um, go to Ben Kissle one my Instagram. I got a couple of dates. I can't wait to see all in July again Front row put a book where you're from if you wear a shirt This is where you're from what country are what race you are business going race you are, business going to fucking, he's ready to roast. Yeah, I'm ready to roast. You know, I love my roast mode. Do we have speaking of roast spring heel jack coffee,

spring heel jack coffee, obviously, do we have any other announcements? No, not right now. Well, I'd say two comics.com go and get the last comic book on the left of issue three. It's beautiful. It's aboo beautiful. We just got the proof for it. It's so good. Incredible.

Both, both Henry and I have stories that we've written. It's beautiful. It's aboo beautiful. We just got the proof for it. It's so good. Incredible. Both Both Henry and I have stories that we've written And this one Ben's work. I know my computer with me now. I'm just a click-clacking on that. That's nice And we got a new episode of No Dogs in Space out. We did a bit of a coda to our monk series where I cover another Band who did Vietnam protest music, but they were a very dark group of a band who did Vietnam protest music, but they were a very dark group of GIs, active GIs, called the Covered Wagon Musicians,

who had a little song called Napalm Sticks to Kids. I guess they did. 1972. Not really upbeat, then is it? No, no, no. Keep on supporting all the shows you're on the last podcast.

Now we're gonna have a couple of shows that we do on serious. Thank y'all so much for listening. Hail yourselves. Hail the Satan tech. The Satan tech. Again, hail Mr. Wade. I would be, I don't know if you're a warrior

and you're like, I'm in the Satan Tank, is it cool or horrifying? I think it's cool, but I think it's really hot. Yeah, yeah, it's not, I think it's fine. It's a light tank, so you are gonna get, it is gonna be hot. You get, you get shot at. Yeah, I'm gonna shot it.

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