Stuff You Should Know - Did Reagan's Star Wars program win the Cold War?

Episode Date: August 16, 2012

Putting lasers in space to blast Soviet missiles out of the air was a very real part of Ronald Reagan's defense policy. While his "Star Wars" program was derided at home and abroad, historians are beginning to wonder if it didn't help win the Cold War after all. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Shuckers Bryant sitting across from me. Hi. Yeah, have you ever seen Donnie Darko? Oh, dude. It's one of my favorites. You know, when he takes that mescaline and like that thing

comes out of his chest and he starts following it? Yeah, he doesn't take mescaline, but yeah. Sometimes I feel when we're sitting across from one another, we're connected by one of us. Like a wormhole of fellowship. Yeah, like from the abyss. That's what it sort of looked like. Yeah, it did look a lot like that. I love that movie. Yeah, when Ed Harris takes all that mescaline. Oh, that movie. And sees that thing come up out of the water. It was just like that. No mescaline. No movies. How's it going? And which people take mescaline. There's plenty of those. Sure. This is what people have been complaining about lately. Who's been complaining? Tell me their names. Various people. People have been complaining.

Oh, you bring something up. I feel like we should address something. We haven't done this in a really long time. It appears to me that we have a lot of newcomers. Yeah, welcome. Yes, welcome. And I think anyone who's been following us the whole time kind of gets the stuff you should know jam, right? Yeah, but it seems like there's a lot of people who don't quite understand what we're doing and think that we purport to be infallible experts on everything and that we don't just get things wrong from time to time. Yeah, we're just a couple of guys who are pretty decent at researching. That doesn't mean like we invented the topic that we're talking about or that we didn't just walk right past a fact or something that we missed in our research.

It comes up. It happens from time to time. So I guess if you're just joining us, that's probably something good to keep in mind. We don't claim to be experts. So don't hold us to that standard because we're not trying to reach that standard. We're just trying to impart some really great information as factually as possible. And we love science and wonder. Great. Are you good? Yeah. All right. How are you doing? I'm awesome. Do you have anything to get off of your chest? No, just welcome the pimento cheese mini sandwiches are in the corner. Help yourself. So Chuck. Yes. Do you remember a while back we talked what we talked about this stuff a lot. Mutual assured destruction. We did a podcast on that specifically, didn't we? We did.

We did one on who won the Cold War. Yeah, did one on how to steal a nuclear bomb. Yeah, like we've done. It's just this fascinating period of world history. The Cold War agreed incredibly tense, incredibly scary. And this is our history. It is in part because you're half Russian. No. But I was alive and well. Yeah. And the young Cold War kids, weren't we? Yeah. Yeah. We've talked about this before. Sure. Ruskies. Little Ruskies. So the central, I guess, the fulcrum of the Cold War, the fact that the reason we're all still here is that was the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. Yes, which is basically like we had enough nukes to wipe out the entire world. The Soviet Union had enough nukes to wipe out the entire world. So we were

just there in a tense, fragile detente. How about a nice game of chess? Exactly. That's why we're still here. So this was, I guess, this accepted reality for every president and every premier from, well, I guess who? For us, from IKON, this mutual assured destruction doctrine was just kind of a part of daily life. But when Ronald Reagan came into office, he came up with a different plan. He did indeed. So instead of a tense standoff, he found that untoward. I guess. I think he found it, from my understanding of Reagan, he would have found it untoward because it didn't give America a clear advantage. Well, the article says he found it morally and politically distasteful. I agree with him in that Reagan didn't like mutual assured destruction for one reason

or another. So he came up with something, a game changer you would call it today if you read books that 80% of an airplane is also reading at the same time. That's right. What is it? Josh, he came up with the strategic defense initiative, which the press like to call the Star Wars program. Yeah. And I remember this very, very well because it was largely derided in the press for a bunch of reasons we're going to talk about. Yeah. I remember very well, too. Yeah. It was all over Mad Magazine. Oh, yeah. It was all over time. There were awesome illustrations of like satellites with laser shooting out of them that like you could see in the mainstream media a lot. Sure. But yeah, I also remember it kind of just basically being generally disliked by the public.

Yeah. As well. Pretty much. It was to be laughed at in many circles, although it was a very serious thing. It was. And it was laughed at for a lot of reasons, but that we're going to go over. So Reagan on March 23, 1983, he held an address to the nation, a little televised speech. And in it, he challenged the scientific community, who he said had created nuclear weapons to make those very same weapons, quote, impotent and obsolete. And that kind of became the rallying cry. Yeah. Like let's make nukes impotent and obsolete. And the way you do that is to make it so that we have a missile defense system that can shoot down every single nuclear warhead that Russia has in its arsenal all at once, if need be. Yeah. After launch, that is. So like

if they launch their missiles, we can shoot them down in space. Yeah. And in Reagan's view, which you know, I can see his point at the time, there would not be any more need for you. He thought it would like neuter the Cold War in its tracks. Soviet Union thought that's not too cool. They thought yet yet yet. Right. Because well, a lot of people felt like it was going to escalate the arms race. The Soviets thought this just means you have a clear advantage over us. This doesn't neuter it like it neuters us. It doesn't neuter you. Right. And Reagan said, as many times as the Soviets could stand to hear it, that this was strictly a missile defense system, right, a net or a shield, if you will, that would only be used in the event that a Soviet nuclear launch was

detected. Right. But the Soviets were saying, or you could just shoot all of our missiles down and then launch a strike. Sure. A first strike where we would have no way to retaliate. So yeah, this is totally unacceptable. And yeah, the Russians rallied against it. But not just them. The here at home, there were a lot of people who didn't really care for it, including the public who thought it was a pipe dream or who thought it would escalate a new arms race for the Soviets or who just thought it was going to be a huge like money pit. Yeah. And it was a lot of those things. And when we say Soviets, let's go ahead and call out the premier that I didn't remember, Yuri and drop off. I didn't remember him. I don't remember him either. I looked him up. He

was only, I mean, it seems like there was a lot of premieres there for a while that like died. Oh, he died thereafter. I think he was in like, like less than a year and a half. Sounds like the KGB had something to do with it in vodka. Oh, yeah. So he was the premier at the time. He wasn't a fan. They launched a big propaganda campaign. It said 70% of their propaganda went toward poo pooing the Star Wars defense program, even though they didn't think it was going to work. Yeah. So yeah, we did our Congress apparently, right? Apparently the Soviets were like, this is not a feasible program. Well, and they said it violates a couple of important treaties. The ABM, the anti ballistic missile

treaty of 72, which the Soviet Union and the United States were both a part of said that at the time that was to ground based missile defense systems, you're allowed later on. It was one. And I guess this would have been more than two. Not only that ground based is a an operative term in this case, because this, this was going to be this, this strategic defense initiative was going to be space based. And that violates another treaty in 1967 outer space treaty says that you cannot use weapons of mass destruction in space. And that's pretty much what was going on or that was what was planned. Right. Right. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you

the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

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on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So all right. So that's why they don't like it. Right. Congress didn't like it. Congress didn't like it either. Most people in Congress, apparently the the missile defense agency attributes coining the term Star Wars to describe the strategic defense initiative, to mock it really, to Ted Kennedy in an interview in the Washington Post. Like almost right after Reagan announced the strategic defense initiative and Reagan spent the rest of the time, he was in office, trying to simultaneously get this pushed through and

to get everyone to stop calling it Star Wars. Because with no luck had had it caught the American public's imagination like, oh, yeah, Star Wars. Let's just go ahead and blow up Russia. Yeah. With Star Wars, he would have been like, yeah, let's call it Star Wars. It's awesome. But it was like Reagan Star Wars, that crazy old gook. He's got Alzheimer's and he wants to put weapons and space and just shoot lasers around and all that. So he spent a lot of time lobbying against people calling it Star Wars, but it didn't work. Now he tried to go by the name strategic defense initiative and you know how the press is. I think he was to get a hold of something. It's all over. He was probably even willing to allow it to be called the SDI. I bet he was even

like, I bet he'd be down there. Let's call it SDI. So Europe wasn't all in favor. The allies, they had some concerns about the balance of power and how this would affect it, obviously. And like you said, Congress, not everyone was against it, but they had some major issues largely. A, the cost and B, is it even possible? Like, are we just pipe dreaming here on these lasers? Right. And they were kind of right. Well, at the time they were. So in Reagan's defense, he said from the outset, like this can take years, decades. This is not going to be an overnight thing. Yeah. And he also said we're going to test a lot of different stuff. Right. He was like, he was well aware the technology didn't exist. Or if it did exist,

it was like a glimmer in some national laboratory scientist's eyes. And it was just in the nascent stages. So from the outset, he commissioned some reports. And the one that kind of got picked up was the Fletcher report. And the Fletcher report basically said, here are eight things you need to build the strategic defense initiative. Everything from sensors that can detect when intercontinental ballistic missile launch is launched. Yeah. Cause they don't phone you up and say, we've launched. Exactly. Right. And you need to make sure that they're accurate. And it's not going to be like a war games thing where it's like, you know, whatever. You also need to come up with some incredible guided missile systems. Just like, I think

there were like eight different, different aspects that basically either needed to be created or needed to be refined to the point where they might as well be created from scratch. Right. And Reagan said, do this. Yeah. He said press on. And I think a lot of people at the time in Congress at least were saying, good idea. Let's use this as a bargaining tool in the arms race. Like we don't really have to do it. Right. They're like, everyone thinks you're serious. Exactly. And he said, this could work as a bargaining chip. And he was like, no, I really want the Star Wars. I'm sorry, SDI. Right. In effect. So apparently, Gorbachev got Reagan to meet him for arms limitations talks in Iceland in October of 1986.

And Reagan went and they had this great talk and like basically Gorbachev was like, let's end mutuals should destruction. Let's basically get rid of our arsenals. And the Soviets were just throwing like bone after bone out of the table. And Reagan just can't believe his luck. Then all of a sudden Gorbachev at the end is like, okay, so we'll go ahead and sign off on this. But all of this is contingent that you give up Star Wars. Right. And Reagan stood up and left. Really? He left. Yeah. Which is kind of like, that's a little crazy, maybe, but that's the level of commitment he apparently had to Star Wars. Well, yeah, not too long after the Soviet says, well, you know what, we got to do something. We can't build a Star Wars. And it's actually

a pretty good idea. They said we can, well, at least they thought they could undertake what they call the Polyus skiff, which was will invent a network of weapons to destroy your Star Wars machine. Right. Which was, hey, that's pretty good thinking, but they didn't have the funding. And it was not very successful either. No, they didn't. And that leads us to a point, if I may, skip around a little chockature. But history has kind of vindicated Reagan in one way, like his Star Wars program didn't go anywhere, but it wasn't given very much time. Right. And the reason why is because the fall of the Soviet Union happened within less than a decade after he announced the Star Wars initiative, the program, the Soviet Union fell collapsed entirely.

And some people attribute that to the defense spending that he immediately caused them to start expending because of the Star Wars program. So he did kind of ratchet up this arms race, but the Soviets couldn't keep up. Right. This came on the heels of us bleeding them dry in Afghanistan, secretly funding the Mujahideen, which became the Taliban, by the way. Right. But we, I don't know how much Reagan knew, but the Soviets were hurting financially. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you introduced Star Wars and they couldn't keep up. Yeah. And the fall of Soviet Union with that came, obviously, the at least huge threat of all out nuclear war. Right. Because they were the major players.

You didn't have to worry about the smaller countries, as far as MAD goes. Right. But you had to worry about rogue states and all that. Right. Making sure that the Russians could hang on to their arsenal, which they didn't do very well necessarily. But yes, the mutual assured destruction just went the way the dinosaur in the Soviets fell. HW Bush comes along. Yeah. People get annoyed, by the way, when we don't say president so-and-so. Who does? I've seen. Where are you seeing? Is this on Facebook? No. I've seen people write in before and I've heard other people say you should always address them as president so-and-so. But I hear all the time people say Obama, Clinton, Reagan. Yeah. So no disrespect intended, folks. HW Bush comes along.

Soviet Union has fallen. So he's like, you know what? We need to really cut back on this scope of this SDI. He probably would have just scrapped it all together. But who's pretty loyal to Reagan? Of course. And so he refocuses the program, cuts it back. Clinton comes along, president Clinton, and refines it even more and cuts it back even more. And by the time that happened, it wasn't anything like Reagan's initial Star Wars program. No, not at all. No. But it would become handy, which we'll get to. So let's talk about what Star Wars was. We've kind of given like a little bit of a broad overview. But until I started researching this, I hadn't really thought about it. But intercontinental ballistic missiles, one's capable

of saying traveling from Moscow to New York, have to leave Earth's atmosphere and enter orbit. And so the idea was we would have something up there that could shoot it down when it entered orbit. That's right. Which meant that we had to place, we had to weaponize space. Yeah. And I wonder if they ever gave any thought to what nuclear bombs going off in space would mean. I mean, surely there's repercussions there. I know it's space, but you can't just go willy-nilly setting off nuclear bombs in space, right? We did in Nevada. Well, that's, that's true. In the bikini atoll. Yeah. And look what happened there. What happened there? Well, I'm just saying it's, it's got to cause some kind of harm to space,

even though it's space, right? Or does it just suck into it? Like, I have no idea. This is something I could not find. I mean, I mean, research that couldn't find anything. Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying. And space is a vacuum. So it should have some effect or no effect whatsoever. But it's got to a nuclear explosion has got to do something. There's someone out there really smart that hopefully is going to email me. I guess though the, the idea behind this was fairly utilitarian where it was like, okay, this possible consequence in space or saving millions of lives here on earth. And they just said, whatever, that's fine. Of course. But so you have something up in space, it's capable of shooting down an intercontinental

ballistic missile like an X-ray laser. That's this is like where we kind of come to some of the, the like, there are a lot of proposals that were kind of out there, but they went ahead and spent a lot of money testing these things like the X-ray laser. And that was a physicist Edward Teller. He created the hydrogen bomb. Yeah, I saw that it was his proposal. So they obviously listened to him. And it was going to use power generated by a nuclear blast. And it never performed well. And it really became the, the focus point for the press and for David Letterman and for Johnny Carson to make fun of because it was an X-ray laser. And this is coming up the heels of the Star Wars movies themselves with their X-ray blasters, or actually they were X-ray. The

death star blowing up. Yeah. Or the death star blowing up that planet. Alderaan, I think they focused the laser and boom. You just saved me from a lot of ire because I was going to say Tatooine. I might have got it wrong. I think it was Alderaan. Man, I hope you got, if there's one thing that I ever hope you got right, it was that one. So many Star Trek fans would be writing in. So there's the X-ray laser and it doesn't go over very well. Which was very much the focus of the media and they were being chided for the fact that they, you know, sounded really far out. Right. But they, they tested it. It just wouldn't work. The idea behind it was that they were going to have a small controlled nuclear explosion. Yeah. That would power this laser,

right? To create a massive amount of X-rays, a concentrated amount of X-rays. Yeah. That would be focused on a missile and then go kaboom. It was called Project X caliber. So it had a cool name too. Yeah. But apparently Teller or the people behind it were accused of falsifying the initial test result. Oh really? Yeah. So it kind of went down in scandal and mockery and everything. So in the little box it said worked or didn't work. They just checked worked and like shuffled away. The cartoon sweat like coming off of there. So some of the other ideas that they tried and spent billions of dollars trying, kinetic warheads, apparently they would collide in orbit. Yeah. It's like shooting a missile at another missile. Yeah. And that one actually was like

the big dog on the block for a while at first in the early stages of Star Wars because it, they figured out that you could have this thing like a basically a satellite based garage. Yeah. With like 10 missiles in it and you just have it floating up there and it shoot at a missile, you know, and one came up and it was a good idea. They're like, we can actually do that. Like, I think we can do this. Yeah. The problem is, is somebody pointed out that all the Russians had to do is shoot a missile at your garage and for their one missile, they took out 10. Yeah. So people said, okay, let's get back to it. And they started exploring other ones. It's like bringing a knife to a gunfight. It's like bringing a missile to a multi-missile fight. No. I don't

think that analogy works at all. I think it's like a sitting duck. Okay. The other thing they wanted to try, Josh, was this rail guns mounted on satellites. Did you see the popular mechanics drawing of this? I did. And it's pretty wicked. Yeah. I got to admit. It looks like an I-beam coming out of the satellite, but it's shooting like a three ounce slug at 200 miles a second. Yeah. It's pretty wicked. Yeah. That one didn't go very far because of the energy requirements. Yeah. It was just way too expensive in an energy sense. And then the MIR-ACL Miracle Laser. It was another laser, but it was ground based using mirrors, right? Yeah. It was a chemical laser. It wasn't like a nuclear X-ray laser. It's like they just started to try to throw cool sci-fi

terms of the time together like, let's make a laser, but let's make it a nuclear X-ray laser and we'll shoot missiles out of the sky with it. Tron. Laser Tron. Let's add that. So then this article doesn't really go into it, but after some of these were kind of asked and answered, up until and even beyond the fall of the Soviet Union, the shining star in all this became these things called bright pebbles. Does that ring a bell? Uh-uh. It did for me. When I ran across it, I was like, those two words sound very familiar. So bright pebbles was the little garage with 10 missiles. These were very small ones, like say 20 to 50 pound mini garages that would shoot slugs or would ram themselves, but I think they would shoot slugs. And rather than having one garage

with 10 missiles, you would have thousands of these little things all over the country, all over space. Oh, they're in space. Yeah. So they were hoping for a constellation of up to like 4,000 of these things just floating around in space. Wow. The cool thing about them was, if you took one out, there were still 3,999 left, right? Yeah. They were autonomous, so they could attack on their own if they wanted to. They could also coordinate and communicate with one another to launch coordinated attacks against missiles. Yeah. So it'd be very tough to overwhelm these things. And they would have been designed to protect U.S. space-based assets, like satellites. Sure. And if the Soviets ever launched anything like it, these things were

trained to just go right after them and blow them out of the sky, too. So basically they were like little sentinels in space. Wow. And they were going to be cost-effective, too. It was going to cost about $11 billion in 1984, I think, which is about $20 billion a day. That's a bargain. It was considering that they were looking at like $20 billion, which is about $43 billion in today's dollars, just to get some of the other ones off the ground. Right. So to get $1,000 off the ground that you could mass produce just $11 billion at the time was quite a bargain. Yeah. And had the fall of the Soviet Union not come and gone, we probably would have bright bubbles up in space right now. Oh, really? And as a matter of fact, they were proven. They were tested the Clementine

probe, which mapped the moon in 1994. Uh-huh. That was a bright pebble that they basically redesigned instead of as a weapon. They used it to map the moon and it did so successfully. So they would have worked. Awesome. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off.

The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our nation loves true crime. And it's no wonder. In the past decade, one in four Americans have reported being victims of crime. But what happens when we survive? That's what we explore in the podcast, Survivors Heal, hosted by me, Oya L. Charelles. I've worked as an organizer, activist,

and advocate for the past 15 years. And for the past five years, I've been on the ground for providing services to survivors of crime. I invite you all to listen in as we discuss the healing side of true crime and what I call the new survivors movement. Listen to survivors heal available on my iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And lastly, yes, a computer model of Bright Pebbles found that had they been in operation during the first Gulf War, they would have shot down Saddam Skud's Skud missiles with 100% accuracy. Wow. Pretty crazy. But well, cheap. I was going to say expensive. No, they're cheap. They just didn't have time to come along. Well, the problem with the rest of the plans is I saw one quote

that said that at the time they were just sort of taking these ideas almost from science fiction. And they felt like they were or some scientists felt like they were a decade away from even like they're saying we can't even start this for 10 years. We need to research for 10 years to see if any of this is even feasible. But I think instead of sort of like trying these things out, Reagan was encouraging that though. I mean, I'm sure he was like hurry up. But at the same time, I think he I got the impression he was saying like sky's the limit guys like use your imagination, do whatever you can come up with. Sky's the limit is beyond the wacky ideas. So did any of these ever work at all? So apparently a couple did like they shot down

three. They shot down a stationary object on earth. They shot down a mock warhead in the earth's atmosphere. And they shot down another mock warhead in space. And one of those things was going 2100 miles an hour. So that so some of these technologies because they had a bunch of different groups testing all these different things. And some of them were successful for the most part now. But it eventually led to a different sort of defense system that we still have today, right? Or is it that what some people say? Yeah, like the ballistic missile defense system. Yeah. It's it's the outgrowth of Star Wars. Like the idea that we have a missile defense system comes from Star Wars. So even though we're not using x-ray lasers, right?

A lot of people say it had some benefit in the end after all. Yeah, because we're using sensors, those same sensors, like a lot of the research that was not like x-ray lasers, but it that still had practical applications. Yeah, we're still doing the day. And apparently it in Pearl Harbor last month, a missile shot down another missile really over the Pacific successfully as a test. Yeah, I was like, somebody's attacking Pearl Harbor again. You know, really? They figured the American public doesn't want to hear us. But yeah, the Chinese shot a missile at us and we shot it down. So everything's cool. That was close. So I guess that's about it, huh? Yeah. That's all I got. Okay. So if you want to learn more about Star Wars, I think it'd bring up a

bunch of crazy stuff if you type Star Wars in the search bar at how stuff works. Like the one man Star Wars. Star Wars one man show. Yeah, that's pretty good. Landau Dr. Pepper Calerisian. Remember that one? I do. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. Just type Star Wars in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And I said that, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh and Lou of listener mail, we're going to do a little Facebook question stuff that we like to do from time to time. And this is happening live, which is pretty exciting. That is scary, because I didn't have listener mail ready. And this is a good thing to do. So let's just look through some of these. And you let me know what you want to read. Okay.

Our friend, Covey Don Covey says, is there a particular side of the recording booth that you each always sit on? The answer to that is yes. I guess if you were facing from here, Josh sits on the right, I sit on the left, but you really come in from the other side. So Josh sits on the far side. And I sit on the near side. Yeah, it's the best way to say it. That's very well put. Yeah. And I think all the podcasters probably, no one ever sits in a different seat. That'd be really weird. Yeah, I'm sure everybody sits in their same seat every time. Like if I sat over there, they'd be disconcerting. You'd have to be a like bonafide nihilist to do that. That would just be odd. I've got one from Jerome Hanson. I would say Jerome, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Who is your favorite Marvel superhero? I guess I would say Punisher. I know he's not a superhero. He's just a straight up hero, because he doesn't have any super powers. But he's definitely the comic I was into the most as a youngster. I'm going to go Spider-Man. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I identified with Peter Parker, not Spider-Man. Favorite band of all time? I feel like we've answered that many times. Okay. I'm going with Pavement still. Pixie still. Okay. I would like to know your opinion of Ann Margaret. That's from Brian Throckmorton. I think Ann Margaret in her day was one of the most smoking hot women on the planet. So my only familiarity with Ann Margaret was from the Flintstones when they had that character

Ann Margaret. And she always seemed like she was on lithium. So I don't have a great opinion of Ann Margaret. Gotcha. Oh, this is good. William Bayer. If you were speed limit, what would you be and why? You know what I would be? What? I would be one of those special speed limits in state parks. It's like five miles an hour. Do you know that the parking garage here is four and a half? Is it really? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I would be then, four and a half miles an hour. It's like they're showing off because just take your foot off and let the idle take you in. That's where I'm at. What would you be? This is arguably the strangest question I've ever been asked. I would say 75. Okay. That's good. Okay. It's fast, but it's not super dangerous. I'm not even to read into it. I

just, that's what comes to mind. Okay. Gotcha. You got one? Let's see. Lisa Tashara asks us, what's our least favorite food? Lisa's at the regular too. I read that. I recognize the name. Hey there. What are you going with? Least favorite food would have to be, oh, I was just talking to you about this the other day. It's like one thing I really don't like and I can't remember it because I generally like everything. What's yours? Let me think about it. Probably mushrooms on anything. I'm just not a fan. Yeah. I know they say they don't have taste, but then I'm always like, well, don't worry, put it in something. They can virtually ruin the pizza. Yeah. Oh, I've got it. Cream cheese. Cream cheese with stuff in it. Like a cream cheese spread,

a cream cheese ball, cream cheese on just about anything. Like if you have a plain bagel hot with cream cheese, that's fine. Just a regular plain smear. But man, once you put like a garden style cream cheese with something else. Yeah, I don't like that stuff either. Okay. Matt Saylor boxers are briefs. We've been asked that before. I'm a boxer guy. Katie Hart, favorite punchline to a joke. Uh, those aren't pillows. I know. I can't say anyone's I know. Uh, you got any more on here? Why don't we do like two more? Uh, let's see. Charlotte Jean asks, how do we take our coffee? I take mine black. I do too. So there you go. That's kind of boring. Got a lot of hair on the old chest from it. And you know, Jason Domini from our friends at, uh, Backdorfen Brunson,

the amazing coffee makers and roasters, which you should not copy makers. Roasters. Right. You should support them, by the way. Um, he says, he gave me a personal tour of the thing in a coffee 101. And he says, if you drink good coffee and it's roasted properly, you don't want sugar. Oh yeah. Definitely don't want milk, but you definitely don't want sugar because he's like, it's really sweet. He's like, coffee beans are exceptionally sweet. And when you roast it right, um, and he called it char bucks, which I thought was kind of funny. He said their stuff is just like bitter because they char it too much because they get beans from all over the place. And when they do that, they want to make them all taste the same. And the way to do that is to

over roast. This is our friend, uh, Rob Pointer was telling us that like there's, he goes to a coffee place in LA where like they don't even have cream or sugar. Oh, really? Like they don't even offer it. If you want it, like they tell you to leave. Awesome. Yeah. When he made his coffee that day, it was great. Um, all right. So I think that that's good enough for now. We'll hit this up on the next one. Oh, we will. Yeah. Okay. We'll be back people. In the meantime, you can contact us at uh, syskpodcast on Twitter. You can hit us up on facebook.com. Whether we have a question out or otherwise at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to crash course, a podcast about business, political and social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm Tim O'Brien. Every week on crash course, I'm going to bring

listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Listen to crash course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.