BEN KISSEL
Home Harbor. Home Harbor. Oh also a lot of pushback, a lot of pushback. Lots of pushback.
MARCUS PARKS
From what, Cillian Murphy?
BEN KISSEL
FDR, my friend.
MARCUS PARKS
What's the pushback?
BEN KISSEL
Manifest destiny.
MARCUS PARKS
That doesn't make any sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
Native Americans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just saying stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
That makes zero sense.
BEN KISSEL
Expansionism.
MARCUS PARKS
That makes zero sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't do that.
MARCUS PARKS
You're thinking about Teddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was Teddy Roosevelt.
MARCUS PARKS
That's Teddy Roosevelt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's Teddy Roosevelt.
MARCUS PARKS
That's Teddy Roosevelt.
BEN KISSEL
Buddy, you should see-
MARCUS PARKS
Whoever is saying that's Franklin Roosevelt has no understanding.
BEN KISSEL
You should see my DMs.
MARCUS PARKS
Your DMs are wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Extremely.
BEN KISSEL
Concentration camps for the Japanese.
MARCUS PARKS
We're gonna be talking about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That wasn't him either.
MARCUS PARKS
And they were not concentration camps, they were internment camps. Two different things.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they were a waiting area, it was like a waiting room for justice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
A lot of controversy.
MARCUS PARKS
And we're gonna be talking about the internment camps on this episode. But yeah, everything you were talking about before, that's all Teddy Roosevelt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's like the 1800s.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's not. It's early 1900s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Might as well though.
BEN KISSEL
Birds of a feather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are they related?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Distant, they're like fourth cousins. Or no, they're third cousins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like Teddy. Teddy created the National Park movement.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. What is the thing? Because Eleanor Roosevelt was Teddy Roosevelt's niece. And Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were actually cousins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, cool. Old school.
MARCUS PARKS
But they're like third cousins, second cousins, something like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you could dip your wick.
BEN KISSEL
Kissing cousins.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because there were like two warring factions of Roosevelts. There were the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, that was Teddy Roosevelt. And then there was the Hyde Park Roosevelts, that was Franklin Roosevelt's family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The fancy Roosevelts. Well they both were fancy.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's arguable as to actually the Oyster-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because Teddy Roosevelt was a rich kid that threw himself into fighting because he wanted to experience life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because he was a sickly child and he wanted to get action, that was his catchphrase.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I wanna get some action.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
FDR is like get these knees out of here.
MARCUS PARKS
FDR was a nerd. He was unliked, unpopular. He didn't figure out how to be like a guy until he was in his like 30s or 40s.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's no way he just trained everybody like you know how like my dog trained us to lift her up the stairs, right?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he did that. I'm sure he did that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's figured out like oh I could just wait by the stairs, you'll just lift me up. You think maybe in some way, shape, or form-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
FDR kind of told everybody, hey, what if I just sit?
BEN KISSEL
That's true!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All the time.
BEN KISSEL
He would just fold himself into a dumbwaiter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my main conspiracy for this entire series.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that he could walk, he was lying about it to get clout on TikTok.
BEN KISSEL
Well I don't know if it really worked out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it was a big deal. No, it didn't work out for him, no, no, no. In the end he did die but we all do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We all do. Is that how we're gonna start?
MARCUS PARKS
That's how we're gonna start.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess so. I really, really guess so.
BEN KISSEL
All right, welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left everyone. Ben hanging out with Marcus and Henry. A lot of Roosevelt talk. I didn't know it was gonna be so saucy up top.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it gets saucier and saucier.
BEN KISSEL
The nice thing about Franklin Roosevelt's legs, you could eat ketchup right off them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah buddy! Nobody's safe.
MARCUS PARKS
Nobody's safe.
BEN KISSEL
Roast mode for that former president!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nobody's safe.
BEN KISSEL
Still lives better than all of us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But at the beginning of this episode, you gotta remember what we now know, right. Because we're doing Manhattan Project.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's history, it's heavy. But remember right now where we're at in the show, it's about a couple of years before the real point of the Manhattan Project which was to invite aliens into our awareness.
BEN KISSEL
Very nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was our knock on the door-
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To all of the various interdimensional creatures that are living in our oceans-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Generating UFOs by spec for each various pilot-
BEN KISSEL
This is great.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Built for their nervous system to go out and examine us. 1933, they already said it.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was the first object that they found, it was in Italy.
BEN KISSEL
Do you see the blood vessel? The UFO blood vessel that pops when he starts talking about nonsense?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's real.
MARCUS PARKS
I see the blood vessel. I also see our credibility melting away.
BEN KISSEL
Melting away!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. What are you talking about? Russia is at the front of the news! Russia's the fucking number one whistleblower since fucking... Who's the guy that did the whistle in Crazy Train?
BEN KISSEL
You know what we're gonna do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the number one whistle.
MARCUS PARKS
Number one whistleblower.
BEN KISSEL
That was the guy who died.
MARCUS PARKS
Randy Rhodes, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Randy Rhodes.
MARCUS PARKS
Tragedy.
BEN KISSEL
Don't get into small planes. Speaking of UFOs today, speaking of melting, we're onto the Manhattan Project part two.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Part deux.
MARCUS PARKS
Now American research into atomic weapons had technically began long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But in truth, it was a halfhearted effort that wasn't much more than a series of meetings and studies that were keeping the project in governmental limbo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you want to get into your conspiracy head, just look up the S-1 Committee. It's an interesting group that FDR will put together to develop the Manhattan Project. But old Vannevar Bush-
BEN KISSEL
Ooh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is around each one of these corners skulking, wondering when do I get to be president?
BEN KISSEL
Come on over, come on over, Vannevar indeed. What a game of red rooster that would be. What's it called again?
MARCUS PARKS
Red rover.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Red rooster is the game where you pin a man down and everybody tries to cover his back with come.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come!
BEN KISSEL
Cluck cluck indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
But by September of 1942, almost a year after Pearl Harbor-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just keeping us on track.
BEN KISSEL
I know what you're up to.
MARCUS PARKS
America got serious about its nuclear program when faced with intelligence that erroneously told them that the Nazis were a hair's breadth away from discovering the secrets to atomic weaponry.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh, you unlocked a secret memory. Eggs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Erroneous?
BEN KISSEL
Erroneous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Because he used the word erroneous, it's from Ernest.
BEN KISSEL
Goes to Camp!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ernest Goes to Camp.
BEN KISSEL
Eggs erroneous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's from the two guys, it was Vern and the other guy that was the big fat guy and then the other guy with the scrunched up face.
MARCUS PARKS
That had no teeth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Let's just hop right into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, let's really just get right into it. But you also 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 the Nazis had the jump.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course.
BEN KISSEL
A lot of great people were born in Nazi Germany, weren't they? They were born-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's roll forward to the astroturfing of history.
BEN KISSEL
To make Germany better.
MARCUS PARKS
Later, after the Nazis, you mean.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Hitler's children as they're called.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god.
MARCUS PARKS
They truly are.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, that's great.
MARCUS PARKS
And listen to the upcoming series on krautrock on No Dogs in Space for more on that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah yes.
BEN KISSEL
He's weird.
MARCUS PARKS
But to head up what was no doubt a massive project, the government chose a man named General Leslie Groves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep, yep. He is definitely looking like a pig in fatigues but he was the man that got the job done.
BEN KISSEL
Oink oink.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not a Matt Damon.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh also, let's do it right now up top, Cillian Murphy did not know-
BEN KISSEL
His name is Cillian?
MARCUS PARKS
It's Cillian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's Cillian Murphy which kind of makes him more goth and cool, it's nice. But this is my official oh, oh-
BEN KISSEL
Who gives a fuck?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, sorry, I'm sorry!
BEN KISSEL
His parents named him Cillian?
MARCUS PARKS
It's a very common Irish name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's an Irish name.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's a common Irish name.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that sounds about right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God. Let's just get right into it.
BEN KISSEL
Let's just hop right in.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Groves was a decisive man who hardly ever took more than an hour to make even the most complicated decisions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like it.
MARCUS PARKS
Groves was so confident in his own abilities that he was often quoted as saying:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"If I can't do the job, no man can!"
BEN KISSEL
He can't be that confident, it took him an hour to order at Starbucks. Make a choice!
MARCUS PARKS
No more than an hour.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay. No more than an hour, okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was making bigger decisions than that. They said the thing about Leslie Groves-
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that he knew how to bring the spam to the front lines which is kind of a euphemistic term-
BEN KISSEL
The pork shoulder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well just the idea of like he could figure out how to get shit done.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a logistics master.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And he was also a massive dickhead.
BEN KISSEL
Makes sense.
MARCUS PARKS
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 100, Leslie Groves was absolutely right.
BEN KISSEL
But you know what the problem is with this guy not understanding office culture? The thing is called make it look like you're working.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.
BEN KISSEL
You know when the guy shows up, he's new and he's just like I love working here-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm volunteering for this and this.
BEN KISSEL
Dick mcfucks pancake shit. And then that's where you actually you would drink the batter and you shit the pancake on the plate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marcus, have you been to Dick McFucks Pancake Shit? Cause actually it's not that bad.
BEN KISSEL
It's not that bad but Rory, new Rory, he's a little annoying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually would base it all on the FUPA. Because Leslie Groves has truly one of the most important FUPAs in all of history.
BEN KISSEL
A power FUPA.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's something about a FUPA that back in the day it denoted responsibility.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A stalwart nature.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now you're just Chris Christie in a baseball uniform.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. The best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is unfortunate because they have the same body.
MARCUS PARKS
They do.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well no, Chris Christie's far beyond. I would put Leslie Groves more... Because Chris Christie has like a Tweedledum body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Leslie Groves has more of a Penguin body. And I'm talking old school Penguin because even if you look at his face has that nose that comes out to the point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Point, he does.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But Groves was notorious for bad first impressions. But more often than not, everyone around him 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 WWII, which was basically the infrastructure that made America the industrial powerhouse of production that made us one of the big dogs of the war effort.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a big dog!
BEN KISSEL
Thank you, ladies.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's right. All the men are away, the ladies come out to work.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I googled Rosie Riveter the other day. Holy hell.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was hot.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like a girl with some guns.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, Rosie Riveter. Pamela. Also this guy looks like a fat version of that one dude who did all the scary voices. Remember that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mel Blanc.
BEN KISSEL
No, not Mel Blanc.
MARCUS PARKS
Do you think Bugs Bunny is a scary voice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stop it, Marcus. Don't even bring that up.
BEN KISSEL
The guy who started it, the guy who did the beginnings of the fantastic hit song by the really healthy intellectual Michael Jordan.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh you're talking about Vincent Price.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He does look like a fat Vincent Price.
BEN KISSEL
He's a fat Vincent Price. Michael Jackson by the way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. Vincent Porks.
BEN KISSEL
Aw.
MARCUS PARKS
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 Pentagon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, again he's a go-to guy for getting massive projects done.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And getting them done domestically.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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 WWII out of a question of loyalty.
BEN KISSEL
It ain't right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was hanging out with a friend of our family and 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, basically everybody that was on the coast was in a constant panic about getting attacked again. So back in the day-
MARCUS PARKS
On the west coast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On the west coast, yeah. Everybody there was like they threw a big dance and then it famously got interrupted by, there was like a false alarm and there was a bunch of sirens and the air raid sirens and everyone ran away and stopped 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 it's amazing because there's this one Japanese family that always comes in full and internment camp costume and they dance and they just love being a part of it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I was like do they?
BEN KISSEL
That's kinda nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really?
BEN KISSEL
It's a friend of the family, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really keeps it going.
BEN KISSEL
A friend of the family.
MARCUS PARKS
Are you serious about that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
I thought that's not a bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no. And it's like doing a dance in Italy where you got a couple guys in full concentration camp pajama outfits. Remember Robin Williams in Jakob the Liar? Horrible movie.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Horrible movie.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well everyone had fun in a different way, don't they?
MARCUS PARKS
My god. Yeah, it sounds like the Jerry Lewis-
BEN KISSEL
Jerry Lewis.
MARCUS PARKS
The Jerry Lewis concentration camp clown movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Next year it might go into public domain. They're saying that we might be able to see it next year.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
That's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Day the Clown Cried.
MARCUS PARKS
The Day the Clown Cried.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
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 $8 billion 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man. No room for that shit, man. Not when you're building the goddamn Pentagon.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Well HR is gonna get in the way of all of the war crimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the idea.
MARCUS PARKS
He was demanding, abrasive, sarcastic, disrespectful, and was described as a son of a bitch and the biggest asshole in the military by more than a few people.
BEN KISSEL
You know how big that asshole has to be to be called that by the military?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But he was also, like so many people in this story, brilliant in his own field, an incredible construction foreman, and a genius at organization. And if not for him, the Manhattan Project would not have succeeded.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is interesting because he did not want to do the Manhattan Project.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was one of those guys that was really excited to go kill people. He was like send 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.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was of the class where he was like weapons don't end wars, people end wars.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he actually started as pretty kind of skeptical that this was going to even do anything.
BEN KISSEL
Well isn't that interesting? They're both right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
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 at the outset, the entire budget for the Manhattan Project was the relatively smaller sum of 100 million.
BEN KISSEL
Oh how is he ever gonna make ends meet with that?
MARCUS PARKS
It's not his personal salary. It's 600 million per month s 100 million total for an entire project. It's relatively smaller.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. But they're gonna David Lynch him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is they're gonna 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 budget.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. The creation of the world's most powerful bomb is a lot like season three of Twin Peaks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of other comparisons I'm gonna make today.
MARCUS PARKS
Which episode eight included an absolutely wonderful atomic bomb explosion using-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's fucking real, dude. Cracking the world open, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
David Lynch eats the same lunch every single day.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 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-
BEN KISSEL
Season three, episode eight.
MARCUS PARKS
Season three, episode eight. What that song is is I think it's called like something for the victims of Hiroshima. And it's supposed to sound like the screaming of everybody who died all at once.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a great scene.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's a great gift to them, they're gonna love that song.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's called Ouch.
BEN KISSEL
Ouch.
MARCUS PARKS
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 gonna make my Navy obsolete.
BEN KISSEL
Not the Navy!
MARCUS PARKS
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 sidelined him, thinking that the experience might teach him some humility. But with a guy like Groves, spite is the strongest fuel you can give him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To most people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's pretty powerful.
BEN KISSEL
Oh indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
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. Now 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 Chambers Street, right near City Hall in downtown Manhattan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa!
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, local boy make good!
BEN KISSEL
Local boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's from my town.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Local boy.
MARCUS PARKS
It started with 12 people and it was thus christened the Manhattan Project.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of like when people name their kids after where they were conceived.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You ever meet somebody named like Chevy dealer?
BEN KISSEL
Trunk. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Outside of Coney Island. You ever met a Coney Island?
BEN KISSEL
Name is Trunk Johnson.
MARCUS PARKS
Now if this was gonna 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 Oppenheimer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. J. R. Oppenheimer, he's in there.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And his main lament, doesn't anybody care about learning?
BEN KISSEL
I don't think they do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish that they would. Numbers are better than people.
BEN KISSEL
Well you're gonna give them two really big examples to learn from.
MARCUS PARKS
Now growing up, Oppenheimer was remembered as being a quote unquote "repulsively good little boy".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I could be better.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh. Repulsively good. What does that even mean? You know when someone is so good, you know they're conniving.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he was a genius. He was truly a genius as a little boy and he loved learning.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Again, like the aforementioned Michael Jackson.
MARCUS PARKS
It gave him in his words, maybe also like Michael Jackson, no normal way to be a bastard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what he said. And that he just threw himself... He came from a very wealthy family that escaped from, they came from Germany, they moved to the Upper West Side of New York City. They were very well off. He was educated at all the finest schools. He was a very spoiled boy.
BEN KISSEL
He sounds like a bastard to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they 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.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's 1200 pages.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lot of pages.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they didn't know what to do. He literally came out brilliant and immediately was like an other to the other kids because again, he was born a dweeb.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He's a Martian.
BEN KISSEL
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Huge cock, heavy balls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he was one of those guys who was lanky and tall. So you know he actually probably was packing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
50/50 shot.
MARCUS PARKS
50/50 shot of like a big gross dick.
BEN KISSEL
I am more inclined to believe 5'7" and under, that's how they've been able to stud. They do have longer dingoes. Technically I'm giving you a compliment in your people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm fine.
BEN KISSEL
And then 6'9" and then just growing like a potato.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They all look like Ottis Toole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure.
BEN KISSEL
5'7" and 6'8" and above.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well later biographies relented and pegged Oppenheimer as a frail, frequently ill child who spent most of his time collecting minerals and writing poems.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did none of you like looking for barium? He really was obsessed with minerals.
BEN KISSEL
Well how do you collect minerals?
MARCUS PARKS
Minerals.
BEN KISSEL
What do you mean? What do you do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's rocks.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's rocks.
BEN KISSEL
Just rocks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He collected rocks.
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus, they're minerals.
BEN KISSEL
That's sad. What a sad childhood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm pretty certain that Dan Aykroyd based a lot of Egon on J. Robert Oppenheimer. Because you remember when he scrapes the gunk off the thing and he's like this is for my collection of molds and spores. Like it's the same shit.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what he does as a hobby, he collects spores, molds, and fungus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
That is better than minerals.
MARCUS PARKS
Well they're pretty rocks.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
They're very pretty rocks.
BEN KISSEL
Great. Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hope you guys like bath salts.
BEN KISSEL
I'm about to take some now.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Why not?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's weird. It's like one of those things where to me, I imagine the Nobel Prize is just like massive crazy thing. But it's kind of like how when you work in show business in Los Angeles and you start to see like how the Emmys and all this stuff are like work functions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In that world, the Nobel Prize is just more like yeah, well Jerry got one. They literally all like, the way they treat it, they were like-
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a thing that you're supposed to get that is supposed to show that you are now like crazy legit.
BEN KISSEL
It's also part of a massive cover up because a lot of people that have wanted a warmongers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't get it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well think about it this way, Oppenheimer not having a Nobel, it's kind of like Leo never getting an Oscar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he finally did get it for The Revenant but he didn't really deserve it for The Revenant, he was better in Wolf.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Exactly.
BEN KISSEL
It's more of a lifetime achievement.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was, it was more of a thank you, Leo, for your contributions.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well by 1942 when Leslie Groves was on the search for a scientist to head 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, said that he was always nervous, he moved with an odd half jogging arm swinging gait.
BEN KISSEL
That's not nervous. That's motivated. You gotta get there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A strange guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He always cocked his head just a little bit to one side and one shoulder was always slightly higher than the other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then he always got his big hat on, like he's got his porkpie hat.
BEN KISSEL
Good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I know why now, have you seen his hair?
MARCUS PARKS
Is it wiry?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He looks like Frankenstein's monster.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's not so bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His hair sticks straight up. Again, another point to I think Egon is based on J. Robert Oppenheimer because the hair goes straight up.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this professor went on to say that Oppenheimer looks simultaneously like a young Einstein and an overgrown choir boy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh great. What a combo.
MARCUS PARKS
Also had horrible teeth, had a constant cough, chainsmoked Chesterfields.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And was emaciated because he'd just forget to eat.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marcus, are you just describing yourself in 2012?
BEN KISSEL
He really did. The only thing that's changed is the cigarettes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Hey, I got my teeth fixed.
BEN KISSEL
I know the teeth!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
The made up issue in Marcus' life!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was too nice to make up other things about him.
BEN KISSEL
I don't even... You look great. You look great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We love it.
BEN KISSEL
Also Sandra Bullock, that was the worst Oscar ever given out, The Blind Side.
MARCUS PARKS
That was horrible, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All she did was literally go to a black neighborhood and people were like I can't believe you did that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
And it's like you know people live there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well because he was emaciated, Oppenheimer's body was a great embarrassment to himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He was therefore rarely naked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was a never nude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Which surprises me because the Oppenheimer movie just got an R rating for nudity and sexuality.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're throwing tits in there.
MARCUS PARKS
I guess so.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because as we're gonna learn about J. Robert Oppenheimer is yeah he's a nerd, but later on he's going to flourish as a man who fucks and fucks pretty regularly.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he had several affairs and I'm pretty certain that's where the sucky sucky comes from in Oppenheimer.
MARCUS PARKS
You think so? Yeah, I want a really graphic sex scene with J. Robert Oppenheimer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All I want is a loop of Cillian Murphy's orgasm face. Just him.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause you know he's so scary, he's so scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't imagine him hovering over me. I'm sorry, it just scares me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His icy blue eyes just going I'm going to come. His weird like little... Ugh, it's very scary.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Little Irish accent. I think Oppenheimer smells like the inside of a Ziploc bag after you take a bologna sandwich out of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was fairly dapper.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I was watching the trials of Robert J. Robert Oppenheimer and the way they all talk about it being like yeah, he was like smart or whatever, but he was kind of mean. You see all these scientists being like you're just jealous!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, just jealous. Well if he didn't like you, if you were talking, he would start doing this weird German accent, like this affected accent, he would go like (German accent) yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Until you shut up.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Well he's right, he's correct.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that was the thing is that he often flexed. He said he had a hard time not berating people because he was so much smarter than everybody else.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you see him blossom into an administrator over the years.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I really understand this guy. I understand where he's coming from.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I know. Sometimes I'm so awed by Kissel's just sheer intellectual-
BEN KISSEL
The number game.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The force. He just says the word number game and I don't know what he means.
BEN KISSEL
Number game.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow. I'm like wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he seems to know what he knows.
MARCUS PARKS
I know what he means by the number game.
BEN KISSEL
You don't know what I mean.
MARCUS PARKS
I think I know what you mean. I think you mean that if you tell people they're stupid often enough, you're gonna be right and you're gonna be right sometimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Broken clock is right six times a day.
BEN KISSEL
Six times a day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's literally what he's saying.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Absolutely. Good work. Good work, boys.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Oppenheimer grew up apolitical but around 1936 when it became impossible to ignore that 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 into politics. Oppenheimer got horny for a communist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah buddy.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It ain't hard.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It ain't hard because you know the best part about a communist, they always share.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. You really got him good there, you really got him good there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is 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. How did he get into it?
BEN KISSEL
He was fucking a communist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well there's a lot, that's what I was saying. If we were writing a book about this subject-
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. If we were writing 'American Prometheus'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If we were writing 'American Prometheus', we too would have a 200 page sequence where we try to chart how the fact that Oppenheimer got really into the Spanish Civil War on the side that was anti Franco. And he grew up with no friends because he was such an alien. Later on he gets to college, he gets into these sort of like what we now call hippie-ish movements where at the time which closely linked to communist ideals and thought patterns.
BEN KISSEL
As opposed to now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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 and most humanitarian projects at the time were all on the left side vs 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.
BEN KISSEL
Makes sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was finally amongst a bunch of cool cigarette smoking communist people talking about cool things in the scene.
BEN KISSEL
Well I believe that would be the human element, would it not?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, absolutely. And through her, Oppenheimer started hanging out with communists. He didn't really accept or really even understand Marx or Engels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he went through 'Das Kapital', that's what they're all saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well the fact that he was the only person in those rooms that read 'Das Kapital' because he was also interested in philosophy and religion.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which comes up time and time again because of his mystical nature. But still, it was like communism light.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he still kind of viewed like oh these are things that can help in America and help society but it was not really about what was going on in Russia at the time.
BEN KISSEL
Well I hate to break it to him, he's really gonna do something anti-communist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well but then they immediately put him on trial right after the war.
BEN KISSEL
Oh!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. They destroy his whole life.
MARCUS PARKS
He gets caught up in McCarthyism pretty fucking hard.
BEN KISSEL
Oh!
MARCUS PARKS
But back then in the 1930s, Oppenheimer just thought that commies were a good hang, which they are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are.
MARCUS PARKS
Well you gotta leave the party-
BEN KISSEL
Well sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
You gotta leave the party when they actually start talking about communism because that's when it just starts getting no fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I love our communist listeners, we have a lot of them, but you do tend to lecture.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which I do understand, there's a lot of reading to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With capitalism you just show up and you got your McDonald's. As long as you show up every day as the manager of McDonald's, you're fine.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You know they're not bringing back the Irish milkshake. You know the Irish milkshake?
MARCUS PARKS
The Shamrock shake.
BEN KISSEL
The Shamrock shake. They haven't done it in years. Isn't that weird?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think they said it was racist or something.
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
No!
BEN KISSEL
To the Irish?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's American to shit green!
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
But I suppose 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 Dallet who died volunteering in the Spanish Civil War. Apparently he was a commander but he wasn't a well liked commander.
BEN KISSEL
I believe it.
MARCUS PARKS
And during a charge one day he got up, he ran out there, men just didn't follow him. He got shot and killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah right, man.
BEN KISSEL
Follow me, guys! Follow me! Oh wait, oh no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh shit.
BEN KISSEL
It reminds me of Jenny when she was dating that very mean-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Forrest Gump voice) I didn't mean to ruin your Black Panther party.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, when she was marrying that very mean, mean man. She was dating him and he was abusive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. But he was a protester too though, so it was very complicated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, it was not complicated. He was an asshole.
MARCUS PARKS
How does that in any way relate to this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It doesn't.
BEN KISSEL
Because Oppenheimer, because he was...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just say numbers game.
BEN KISSEL
Because-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just say the words numbers game.
MARCUS PARKS
Numbers game.
BEN KISSEL
Because he... Wait, you did say something that related to Jenny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just got lost. He just literally he heard something and was just like-
MARCUS PARKS
He got lost in the sauce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's sounds like Forrest Gump. That sounds like Forrest Gump.
BEN KISSEL
That is Forrest Gump! No, it's because you said-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Go back. Brain, brain, bring me thoughts. What's Forrest Gump say? What doe she say? Jenny?
BEN KISSEL
Jenny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, let me just say it in the show, they've been talking for a minute.
BEN KISSEL
They're assholes, like the man who was beating up Jenny, who also took advantage of the special needs man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey! He was smart. (Forrest Gump voice) I may not be a smart man but I know what love is.
BEN KISSEL
No, no. I mean that's not mutually exclusive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He taught her how to dangle.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah well...
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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 Dachau and got out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so when he heard that, these are all the X factors that got him involved because he really was like a peacenik.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
BEN KISSEL
The Nazis got three Xs on X factor and they're out out here!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're out of here!
MARCUS PARKS
Now on paper, Oppenheimer was a terrible choice to head the Manhattan Project.
BEN KISSEL
Oh good.
MARCUS PARKS
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 communists.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They didn't want him.
MARCUS PARKS
No. And as opposed to so many other candidates, Oppenheimer didn't have, as I said, a Nobel Prize.
BEN KISSEL
It's interesting. I'm a theoretical powerlifter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, in my mind I lift a lot of weight.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But could you write an extensive paper on powerlifting-
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
And teach a class on powerlifting-
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And have it actually be helpful?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Then for it to be helpful?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Please do.
BEN KISSEL
Pick the shit up, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, times three. Shut the fuck up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sounds like a regular Richard Feynman. You can really boil complex systems down.
BEN KISSEL
I know how to do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's allegorical teaching. Just say numbers game. That's all you gotta say.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Powerlifting is a numbers game.
BEN KISSEL
It is a numbers game.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because weight is numbers, isn't it?
BEN KISSEL
I know that. Pick it up, up and down, up and down, up and down times three. Shut the fuck up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Richard Feynman.
MARCUS PARKS
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. And he was fucking right.
BEN KISSEL
It was a FUPA feeling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a FUPA feeling. (singing) I feel it down in my FUPA and it's going down to my toes. He also was brought in, right? So one of Oppenheimer's old buddies was the guy who invented the cyclotron, who won a Nobel Prize for building the cyclotron. And so when they started these like, very serious meetings, which was how do we figure this out? He's like you gotta meet my buddy Oppy, which is what they call him, this guy is a fucking literal across the board genius, he's a half a communist but he does this shit. And they're like all right. So he brings him into a room, his first meeting and he nails in that meeting what Werner Heisenberg bobbled the the years before.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He made a fucking formula right there to tell them how much uranium-235 theoretically would be needed to build an atomic bomb. And he was really close immediately.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they're like oh he might actually be kind of necessary for this and then he kind of like built 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 gonna be a spy. But they just don't know actually it was way more of his students.
BEN KISSEL
Oh is that something?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But in the end they're like well he's too fucking smart. Well he's so fucking smart.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was his main problem.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He couldn't talk sports. Which I understand, I'm trying to bridge the gap to straight men.
BEN KISSEL
I wonder what sport was it, just baseball?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Baseball.
BEN KISSEL
And I think candlestick bowling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Candle bowling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard to talk to straight men.
MARCUS PARKS
What are you saying? Only straight men like sports? That's not true.
BEN KISSEL
You do it all the time, you do it everyday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the others, the others.
BEN KISSEL
No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When you meet them out there.
MARCUS PARKS
You're just talking about men.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just have to say like Shaquille O'Neal, he was bad at free throws. I learned to say stuff like that.
BEN KISSEL
He was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they'll say a bunch of stuff and I go yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The GOAT.
BEN KISSEL
The GOAT indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Crossovers, man. These guys, they don't even know how to dribble anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Just like Oppenheimer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
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 Fermi, 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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) Okay, let me explain. Imagine the nuclear weapon is like a spaghetti.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) You got it, it's a spaghetti, right?
BEN KISSEL
I got that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) You got a noodle, you gotta put it in a pasta water.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) And the pasta sauce, and also-
MARCUS PARKS
You want to put some étouffée in there?
BEN KISSEL
Now you're French. Now you're really French. That's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fermi, call me when it's boom boom time.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Like spaghetti indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can talk about many subjects.
BEN KISSEL
I know you can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just like Robert Oppenheimer.
MARCUS PARKS
Now if you'll remember, physicist Walter Bothe of Germany's Uranium Club, he believed that graphite couldn't be used to produce nuclear reactions. So he had therefore moved onto 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.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, buddy. That's where I come in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly that would be Kissel's one true contribution to the Manhattan Project.
BEN KISSEL
We need a pile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We need to like make it round.
BEN KISSEL
What kind of pile?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Big.
BEN KISSEL
You want big pile? I can get you a big pile. Yeah. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a numbers game.
BEN KISSEL
It's a number pile, yeah. That's a number pile.
MARCUS PARKS
Well using 771,000 lbs of graphite bricks, the scientists spent 17 days building an egg-shaped mound 25 ft wide and two stories tall.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Right there on the squash court.
BEN KISSEL
Damn, that's huge.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Adorably, Enrico Fermi, he made calculations with instruments that he'd named after Winnie The Pooh characters.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
Like Piglet, Roo, and Heffalump.
BEN KISSEL
It's going to lead to the destruction of all humanity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) It's a-me, a-Fermi.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
He'd been reading Winnie The Pooh books to teach him English because he didn't know English.
BEN KISSEL
That's cause he's a sociopath.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) Christopher Robin, he imagine all the different names.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, Christopher Robin was abused.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) Cause they say yes, Christopher Robin, he was molested.
BEN KISSEL
We don't know that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) He molested, he make up the creatures to talk to because in his mind he separate from the abusio!
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Now within these graphite cubes were uranium slugs dispersed throughout-
BEN KISSEL
I don't think so. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) It's the abusio!
BEN KISSEL
No, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Christopher Robin. If anything he's guilty of so many horrible things, that's why he lives in the woods. You know they actually do have that theory that he buries the bodies in the woods and then he pretends like Winnie The Pooh is around there and Piglet's around there. He's a serial killer, Christopher Robin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a numbers game.
BEN KISSEL
It is indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well uranium slugs were dispersed throughout these graphite cubes like so many nuclear raisins in graphite loaves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People say we can't teach.
BEN KISSEL
Look at that, I like that.
MARCUS PARKS
I took that analogy, I stole that. That was from 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it's really goo.
MARCUS PARKS
The author used that. Yeah, nuclear raisins in graphite loaves.
BEN KISSEL
Can we change it to chocolate chips?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
Now it's ours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because that's what J. Robert Oppenheimer 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 fission concept and eventually yada, yada, yada, it's gonna explode.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just let it go and let it explode. But this also shows the kind of scattershot way they started to build a weapon because Leslie Groves would kind of set up all these areas all around the country, kind of all in competition against each other to come up with stuff first. But it's weird because it's like playful. They're just dumping a bunch of graphite and nuclear bits in a thing, kind of seeing what the fuck happens with it when it really could have killed all of them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, it really could.
BEN KISSEL
Science!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this is the difference, this is when theoretical starts to move into practical science.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's what Oppenheimer also understood early on. He said originally no, this is all gonna be different. It wasn't like Werner Heisenberg. He literally had to figure out like oh no, this has to work in real life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This isn't a classroom lesson.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, this is how it moves.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. You want to make sure the mathematical formula is correct. Weird Science, that movie, what if instead of that beautiful woman it was Chyna from the WWE they created and she ripped her dicks off? That'd be kind of funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's another movie but I like it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's kinda fun. She's dead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean but the idea of it.
BEN KISSEL
RIP.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I could be carried around by a big woman.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Also the Iron Sheik just died.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
He made it a long time.
BEN KISSEL
Speaking of spite.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Speaking of spite.
MARCUS PARKS
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 Chicago, that was indeed a grave concern.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I would ask my city council to just be like did we sanction this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think they were informed.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
MARCUS PARKS
So as a precaution, they had a dude standing by with an ax whose only job-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(metal guitar riff)
MARCUS PARKS
His 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.
BEN KISSEL
That's all? That was it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well no.
BEN KISSEL
That was the safety net?
MARCUS PARKS
No, they had backup guys. They had two dudes with buckets of water.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. That's not gonna work.
MARCUS PARKS
But the water was laced with cadmium so they could throw it on the pile and that would stop the cadmium, it would stop the nuclear chain reaction.
BEN KISSEL
They really should have given the guy a sickle. That would have worked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Very big ax.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But in the end the experiment went exactly as planned. At 3:53 PM on December 2, 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just sounds like something Guy Fieri eats and throws up.
BEN KISSEL
Oh he doesn't throw up. Also Guy Fieri by the way, put some respect on him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I never will.
BEN KISSEL
He ate raw eggs on an episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he did.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He learned.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. You don't know but he doesn't like eggs.
MARCUS PARKS
I know that, I know that because you've mentioned it hundreds of time.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
That Guy Fieri doesn't like eggs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a numbers game.
BEN KISSEL
Also the Chicago Pile, that's exactly who you want running the football on the goal line.
MARCUS PARKS
His name was Refrigerator though, he already had a nickname.
BEN KISSEL
Well I know but this is the 40s. William Perry is just a little cooler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about what Shaquille O'Neal would have done if he could've figured out how to change that free throw ratio.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's a really good point.
MARCUS PARKS
Now some stories paint this as a moment of elation, it's a moment when the boys broke out a bottle of Chianti, we gotta celebrate this, this is one of the most impressive scientific achievements in history! Now there was indeed a bottle of Chianti involved but the scientists sat and drank it from paper cups in silence. And afterward, physicist Leo Szilard 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."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) I have to say, this is certainly the most spicy meatball.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it is. Yeah it is spaghetti. Looks like it's got some squid ink in it.
MARCUS PARKS
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, almost unlimited budget to get the Manhattan Project off the ground. See as Fermi and Szilard 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. But in reality, Heisenberg had stalled completely. Although by appearances, he seemed right on track.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, he did it on purpose so he wasn't getting sent to a goddamn concentration camp.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. I can't even imagine when they walk in and you're just like no, we're busy, we're busy!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh this water is the heaviest shit. Ooh I pulled my shoulder. (German accent) That's my problem is I hurt my shoulder lifting the heavy water.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You better come up with frozen pizza or something. You better get something created.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Oh!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
I think we all know Hitler was obsessed with different kinds of piles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Mostly ones right on his chest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. He liked that poo poo.
BEN KISSEL
That's what they say.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what they say.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Weird guy. I've been saying he's a weird guy.
BEN KISSEL
I heard that. I heard that. Weird guy.
MARCUS PARKS
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 invasion of Italy.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
He would have had it a full year and a half before D-Day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait.
BEN KISSEL
Have you guys read the biography on Hitler, Weird Guy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is crazy.
BEN KISSEL
It's kind of funny. They actually yada, yada, yada like 10 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's mostly about his painting career.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a four page book.
BEN KISSEL
It's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in other words, if Hitler had the bomb by the end of 1942, the Allies would be far beyond fucked.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. Wow, that would be crazy. Now true question though, it being Europe, quite tiny. Can you really use the bomb on your European enemies-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Totally.
BEN KISSEL
Without getting fallout in your own goddamn backyard?
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they would have learned. Well what do we know? What do we know about the Nazis?
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They didn't really even care about themselves. We know that one of the end plans that they were gonna do was gas bomb everybody. That was already in a contingency past the atomic bomb. They were ready to kill everybody.
MARCUS PARKS
No, 1942, that atomic bomb, that's going to London. They've already taken Paris. They don't need to bomb Paris.
BEN KISSEL
Right, right.
MARCUS PARKS
That shit's going to Moscow.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah. Moscow's quite far away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
New York!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's going to New York, it's going to Washington DC.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Washington DC.
MARCUS PARKS
There's plenty of places far beyond Germany itself, even far beyond the fucking... Because that's the thing, they're taking the Lebensraum but if it gets a little irradiated for a couple of years, fuck it, it's 1000 year Reich, they can wait it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) That is why we have so much room!
BEN KISSEL
Yep. One thing we learned about New York is they handle it all very well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, shit, shit fuck company men.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In the first of many catastrophic lab accidents, an assistant was preparing an experiment and fumbled the powdered uranium.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German shouting)
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
That produced a 12 ft tall explosion of flames-
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
That badly burned the assistant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(screaming)
BEN KISSEL
My labia! Ah, my labia!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Schizer!
MARCUS PARKS
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 to deal with it but the dumb fuck assistant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) I can feel maybe we should try Gregory. I feel that Gregory could go in because seemingly half of my mouth is sc shot due to see meltings of the fires and the burnings.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. Let's see if he dies.
MARCUS PARKS
Again the powdered uranium exploded.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Schizer!
BEN KISSEL
This guy is having a bad day.
MARCUS PARKS
He was covered in hot flames.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(screaming)
MARCUS PARKS
They said hot flames were poured upon him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(screaming) (German accent) I gotta get out of this internship!
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed, my friend.
MARCUS PARKS
And wanting to help, the other Nazi assistants brought buckets of water to put out the fire.
BEN KISSEL
That'll do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) You gotta use milk! Use milk!
MARCUS PARKS
But they were also dumb dumb Nazis because burning uranium has a habit of reacting explosively with water.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) You're making it worse and worse!
BEN KISSEL
It is funny.
MARCUS PARKS
And so when they tried putting out the fire like it's a fucking Three Stooges sketch-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The apparatus exploded like a grenade and threw hundreds of metal rivets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This time the flames were 20 ft 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 blaze, so they had to let it just run its course for two days like a fucking tire fire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) So tell me Werner, how was the experiment this weekend?
MARCUS PARKS
Bad.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you're just gonna want to let it breathe itself out there, you just want to let it go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) We are in a waiting period.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) Where the flames are doing their work so then we can go our work.
BEN KISSEL
That's good. Well technically it was better because the first flames, 12 ft, second flames, 20 ft. I mean next thing you know, boom, boom, boom boom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) Making big explosions is explosions!
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. You're doing a great job, Bill.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) I wish the experiments would stop.
BEN KISSEL
I know, you're burned. Every time I see you a different part of your body is burned.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) There has to be another assistant stepping to this.
BEN KISSEL
Oh buddy, your nose is falling off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) You think I don't feel it? You think I don't feel it slide?
BEN KISSEL
Man, we're bad scientists, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
But perhaps what was interfering with Heisenberg's work the most were 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) Absolutely tremendous people, nothing but the best teams. Everybody's pulling together, tremendous people, tremendous work.
BEN KISSEL
Great. Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) Tremendous work all around. Me? Oh why am I not busy working? Because let me just... It's a numbers game.
BEN KISSEL
It's a numbers game. Burnt up all of your staff and crew and half of yourself.
MARCUS PARKS
As a result, Heisenberg's work on nuclear fission was completely stalled by 1943.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, what a total epic fucking failure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. He was very happy though because then it got him out of the spotlight with his bosses.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
1943, it's done. America keeps believing for two years that he is miles ahead of him.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. That's the power of playing like you're behind even if you're in the lead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love your term, we always talk about it. Under promise, over deliver.
MARCUS PARKS
Over deliver.
BEN KISSEL
That's what we do.
MARCUS PARKS
At the same time though another Axis 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.
BEN KISSEL
What do you mean these people? Oh Nazis? Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I mean Japanese.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
By 1942-
BEN KISSEL
That was bad then!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
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 Japanese-
BEN KISSEL
I didn't. Can you imagine if we solved-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
If the whole world was just us-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Bob Hope didn't.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The other comedians at that time period, yeah, they had no idea.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Vaudeville was completely unaware of nuclear fission.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Japan, they projected that they themselves would need at least 10 years to produce an atomic weapon.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But this didn't really bother them because Japanese scientists believed 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this is another one of those massively debated questions of history of why? Because we talked a little bit before the show.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where like why did they think that? And how did the Japanese, 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.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Japan just massively, massively underestimated America.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like they thought, seriously with Pearl Harbor they thought basically there was an oil embargo-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of history put into a sentence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but I can boil it down. There was an oil embargo on Japan that the United States was a part of because Japan has very few resources of its own. So the Japanese figured all we gotta do, we can bomb Pearl Harbor, we'll take out America's entire Navy all at once and we can start to get oil again.
BEN KISSEL
There you go, it's a numbers game. 1, 2, 3.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See? Look at that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But what they didn't figure on was the fact that America could just build another Navy and we could build another one and we can build another one.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's the other thing about it is that they did not realize that if you bop America on the nose, we will not stop until you are all dead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. That's why it's important, that's the birth of the American war machine that you all in other countries get to experience all the time. So thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you. You're welcome for that-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're welcome.
MARCUS PARKS
You're welcome for that nuclear weapon on your country's soil.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're welcome.
BEN KISSEL
How is that new tech going over in Ukraine by the way? I would love to see it in action. That's the power of the pent up Pentecostal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
There is so much hidden rage and this is still the time of America and idealism, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So they're just like you don't fuck with us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, this is actually before the idealism part. Technically we're still-
MARCUS PARKS
You mean American exceptionalism?
BEN KISSEL
Exceptionalism.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh no, we are isolationist at this point in history.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So they woke up a sleeping giant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did.
MARCUS PARKS
Those were Hitler's exact words.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I gotta go.
BEN KISSEL
Now interest in Vietnam-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We gotta go.
BEN KISSEL
In chapter seven of Weird Guy, he actually does, he says if you mix watercolors with your tangible solubles-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's incredible.
BEN KISSEL
You can actually make a really good river.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel's comedy is really just a numbers game and you just never know what comes up.
BEN KISSEL
It's a numbers game, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's exactly what Rush Limbaugh said. I think about that from The Birdcage.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Japan, because they didn't believe that America had the resources to build an atomic bomb, they diverted all of the resources they may have spent on atomic research to radar 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.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It just doesn't seem like a good build. Radar?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And honestly they're so svelte over there, most of their water is very thin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
There you go, you really nailed that one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What do you want from me?
MARCUS PARKS
No, radar was actually a great use.
BEN KISSEL
Was it big, yeah?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh no, radar was a great use of their resources. Absolutely.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They really should have put more into, what do you call it, codes. Because once America broke the codes, it was all over for Japan.
BEN KISSEL
Up and down, left, right, left, right left, right, I'm a virgin. And then you have all those labs in Contra.
MARCUS PARKS
A B A C A B B, you know that.
BEN KISSEL
I actually never knew that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's happening, guys?
BEN KISSEL
Contra.
MARCUS PARKS
Up, down, left, up, up, down, left, right, left, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Am I the only person who's not the nerd?
MARCUS PARKS
A B start.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is this a nerd alert on you two? This is a nerd alert on you two.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right. A B start, 30 lives, Contra, that's fine.
BEN KISSEL
Unbelievable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Larry Bird really knew how to talk some shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah he did. He actually did.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, that's crazy psychological.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came to competition, General Leslie Groves was determined to win hard and win fast. Now Groves researched 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.
BEN KISSEL
Nerd.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, it's the only time being a nerd is cool.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But Groves' biggest problem at the outset was deciding which research path to take towards a nuclear weapon. At this point, remember there's multiple ways. There's the graphite method, there's the heavy water method, there's all kinds of ways that we could get to the bomb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the thing is you got to figure out how do you make a thing that it goes explode?
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so they just threw every single thing that they had at the project. That's what they were all very interested about. Normally they had to 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.
MARCUS PARKS
Anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But also it puts a lot of pressure on people when you have to do a thing like whatever you want, do it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It reminds me of what happened with McDonald's and the milkshake machine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the Shamrock.
BEN KISSEL
They were attempting to get more milkshakes sold quicker but you know what they did then?
MARCUS PARKS
What?
BEN KISSEL
They got a multi whipper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
And they were able to whip three milkshakes at once.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Richard Feynman.
BEN KISSEL
So there you go. Diversify.
MARCUS PARKS
Is this a Ray Kroc thing?
BEN KISSEL
No, I fucking hate Ray Kroc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was a true American.
BEN KISSEL
No, he was an asshole.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
An American. True American.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
You know it would be interesting to see their faces when the bombs do go off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They were like yay. I'm really happy it wasn't half the actual population of Cincinnati. Can you imagine if that's just what they did?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They went to Cincinnati and they were like we're gonna break you up in ones and twos. The ones, you're working on the atomic bomb, let's go.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh. I think that's how that chili came about.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Not Isaiah Thomas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lebron James, Bugs Bunny.
MARCUS PARKS
Well if you get Isaiah, you don't get MJ.
BEN KISSEL
That's the problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how we know.
BEN KISSEL
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 S. Thompson moment just watching this shit live.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
God.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, what a nightmarish... But I don't know, interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This begins the (singing) work together, come on, come on, let's work together.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In the movie, this part is going to be like a montage with music, like a lot of Oppenheimer on trains.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, him driving back and forth in a big jalopy.
MARCUS PARKS
(trumpet music)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Picking up Niels Bohr who's like fancy seeing you here, fella! You wanna come along with me to my Manhattan trip? And hes just like you got it there, fella. And he picks him up.
BEN KISSEL
Well I'm just happy they're gonna make it really cute.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well initially Oppenheimer estimated that he would need 50 scientists and 50 technicians to head up four divisions, theoretical, experimental, chemical, and ordinance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ordinance.
BEN KISSEL
What the fuck is ordinance?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's how to get it done.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the bomb itself. Yeah. But Groves said fuck you, Oppenheimer, that's not enough. Triple the number you think you need and go get them.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, any scientist that's not tied down.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well you have to take them out of my basement then.
MARCUS PARKS
Now most scientists were convinced to come work on the Manhattan Project off the assumption that the Nazis were getting close to the bomb.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But when a scientist hesitated in getting involved in war at all-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oppenheimer made sure to share the utopian vision that the atomic bomb would actually end war forever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you imagine how incredible it would be if we could teach bombs how to dance?
BEN KISSEL
It'd be nice. Again, it's a little bit correct.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish a bomb could kiss.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they'll teach everybody how to love and instead of die.
BEN KISSEL
I do love that, I do love. Now also it's Pride Month so they are more open-minded this month when they explode.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they are. And there hasn't been a war since 1945.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Not a nuclear one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. There have been skirmishes and conflicts.
MARCUS PARKS
Police actions.
BEN KISSEL
I don't want to fall in one of those Vietcong traps, man. I've been touring that museum, it's been an eight hour tour, I've been working through it on YouTube.
MARCUS PARKS
That's nice.
BEN KISSEL
It's fucking crazy, bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
You don't want to fall in them traps, bro.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I don't wanna go in no tiger cage.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
They got tiger cages, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're going on virtual museum tours at home?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah because I wanted to go visit it.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm proud of you.
BEN KISSEL
Because it's absolutely incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess it's true. I guess it's true.
BEN KISSEL
It's absolutely incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
Where is it?
BEN KISSEL
It's in Vietnam.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh wow. That's crazy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's the Vietnamese, it's the Vietcong, what they did for war. And man, you can do a lot with a nail and a wood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You you really can, you really can. I follow a lot of Vietnamese street food vendors.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, that's good too. That's real nice.
MARCUS PARKS
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 and he did it all in two months.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
Now by design these towns needed to be isolated and that went double for the town that was going to be responsible for actually constructing and testing the bomb itself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you know what's interesting is 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 experimentations.
BEN KISSEL
Not a good idea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then they're all like oh so we're gonna test this attack bomb right outside of Chicago?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And they paint a huge target on Chicago basically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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 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. I mean try explaining nuclear radiation sickness to a fucking congressman in 1942. How do you do it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, they'd be like what do you mean, they're being pussies? Their cells are being pussies.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean Jim Inhofe just brought a snowball into the Capitol there.
MARCUS PARKS
The chamber?
BEN KISSEL
A couple years back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, we can't compare anything now because they used to have thoughts and shame and pride back in the day.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
They had dignity.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They had dignity, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Some did, not all.
BEN KISSEL
Some did.
MARCUS PARKS
I wouldn't say Strom Thurmond had a lot of dignity.
BEN KISSEL
No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, you're right.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well therefore Groves chose the site of a former boys prep school in Jemez, New Mexico, about 40 miles northwest of Santa Fe. And he rechristened it as Los Alamos.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that was also J. Robert Oppenheimer's old stomping grounds.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he loved the desert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He loved the desert and he loved riding. He loved going out being like you wouldn't believe just how groovy a cactus can be.
BEN KISSEL
I believe that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're my friends! But he loved this area of the world and he knew the Los Alamos area because that was one of his, I mean again, the things you learn about him, where one of his big issues when they first found a spot, he's like you can barely see the beautiful mountain ranges from here. How will we be inspired?
BEN KISSEL
That's not the point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But eventually that 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. Green, red.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Orange.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
MARCUS PARKS
It can be a beautiful place.
BEN KISSEL
Sure! Why not?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Blue is the sky. Clouds are white.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
The land of enchantment.
BEN KISSEL
Some cactuses actually like to lie down.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a numbers game.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a numbers game. That's what comedy is.
BEN KISSEL
It really is. That's true, I saw someone adopt a cactus. It was on Instagram.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, it has to be real.
BEN KISSEL
It is. Some cactuses actually do like to lie down.
MARCUS PARKS
Los Alamos-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting. We're just gonna move on.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Los Alamos was only one of the Manhattan Project's three so-called secret cities. And even those three, those weren't the only Manhattan Project sites. Besides Los Alamos, codenamed Site Y, the other-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Y? Because we gotta.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Y like the letter, not why. It's not like Café Wha?
BEN KISSEL
I didn't say it! Why are you look at me? I figured it was fucking Y, not why. It's not the Joker.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was doing that homonym based joke.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Right. Well the other two main sites were in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, 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 3500 in a town that already included a school, a laundry, libraries, a movie theater-
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Bachelor apartments-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
MARCUS PARKS
Barbers-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was because they separated the men and the women, except for the ones that were married.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They had barbers, two restaurants, a vet, and a bar.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And this was all there when they showed up. Although they did also vastly underestimate the resources they would need.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
It was not fun to live there for the first few months.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. They were living pretty fucking rough.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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 to.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I also watched 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow. Well by the time the bomb dropped-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is interesting.
BEN KISSEL
It is interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well by the time the bomb dropped in 1945, Los Alamos, their population would have doubled to 8000.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And a couple of years later it was up to 10,000 because work did not stop on atomic research after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
BEN KISSEL
And these people were just asexuality multiplying, right? From the chemicals over there?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They were like gremlins.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well actually it was a massive issue because people were having babies, people were fucking and having babies and it was like at some point Leslie Groves 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.
BEN KISSEL
You know he has a point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
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 Gomorrah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not good.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we know that story.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Turned into salt.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
With Gomorrah the Allies used incendiary bombs 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 bombs from WWII contained small sticks of white phosphorus called bomblets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cute.
BEN KISSEL
Oh little bomblet.
MARCUS PARKS
They scattered themselves around the target at a high altitude in advance of the actual explosive bomb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, that's fun and cute, they're the bomb's little helpers.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It is the home of the Hamburger.
MARCUS PARKS
And once the big bomb-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it was in St. Louis.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's Hamburg, Germany. That's where the hamburger was created.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting. Well once the big-
BEN KISSEL
I think it was actually up in like Rhode Island or something.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. But once the big bomb hit the ground, it would ignite these bomblets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cute.
MARCUS PARKS
Starting fires so hot that they could melt metal and rock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Metal, cool.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, that's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Those fires would then spread indiscriminately to the rest of the city where they would meet fires caused by other incendiary bombs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it's like they're meeting all of their friends!
BEN KISSEL
It's a hell of a day to be a fire.
MARCUS PARKS
This would create firestorms so hot that the pilots dropping the bombs from thousands of feet above, they were nearly suffocated by the heat.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But that was of course nothing compared to what was happening on the ground.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it was more like a fire festival.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Weird guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the firebombing of Dresden is the most infamous of these operations due to the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse Five.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But the nighttime British firebombing of Hamburg in 1943 which killed 45,000 civilians, mostly old people, women, and children, that was just as bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why were you letting me talk about how cute all the bomblets were?
BEN KISSEL
I mean you know...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How that was a cute thing to do and then about the meet-cute with the flames and stuff, why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you stop it then?
BEN KISSEL
It was kinda cute. They did name it something cute. Anytime you have sickle at the end of anything or ickle-
MARCUS PARKS
Let. It's a bomblet.
BEN KISSEL
It's a bomblet.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just let me do that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, 45,000 innocent people.
MARCUS PARKS
And 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.
BEN KISSEL
There was one dude who was like I kinda like the way I taste.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
I kind of like the way I taste.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is not cute at all.
BEN KISSEL
He's in a puddle of his own fat.
MARCUS PARKS
He's eating his own fat.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Do we have any pretzels?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All I know is you can't get a scoop of my liquid, you'd get high as hell.
MARCUS PARKS
Well if you weren't burned or melted, you'd 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-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no.
MARCUS PARKS
Or cause their innards to burst out from underneath their ribs.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like popcorn.
MARCUS PARKS
Their entire rib cage, yes, would empty out.
BEN KISSEL
You never want your last words to be You never want your last words to be like well I needed that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not cute.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's not. But you did make it cute.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why did we need the other bombs? It sounds like these bombs are doing a really good job of being like naughty.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of being bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, being real bad. Yeah. And of course all of this would pale in comparison to the firebombing of Tokyo that would happen I think a year or two later. But while this does prove that the firebombing of cities, whether it was Hamburg, London, or Tokyo, it proves they were always horrific.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It also showed that the men in charge during WWII had no issue bombing civilians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
After all, when it was all said and done, 38 million civilians died during WWII, which was incredibly 2.5 times the number of military personnel killed. And 38 million is a conservative estimate.
BEN KISSEL
And for fucking what? I mean obviously to fight the Nazis but like stupid human beings.
MARCUS PARKS
But why did the Nazis do it in the first place?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like why did the do it in the first place?
BEN KISSEL
Fucking point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's humbling because you think about like how much destruction was caused in such a short period of time and what they had to kind of scramble to do and how the Manhattan... It's so crazy. This whole story is just... This time period.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They came out of this all fucked up.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like now we kinda know about like trauma and PTSD. You think about these guys were fighting in the just war, like the quote unquote "good war".
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Greatest generation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 38 million, that's what, about 1/10 of the population of the United States?
BEN KISSEL
I guess they could have done it in Alan Parsons, Nevada, the Alan Parsons project.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean which also very controversial for a lot of people, just as controversial as the Manhattan Project.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
I could see that.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nevermind most of it was taken over by that group, the S-1 committee, that was just like FDR just kind of said you're in charge of this thing, you're gonna go and do this. And it was just a group of guys that you wouldn't know. You know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were all just a bunch of famous guys within the government. They were super, super powerful and they didn't have to answer to anybody but themselves.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Not surprisingly, many of the people Groves recruited went on to have extensive careers in the CIA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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 about 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.
MARCUS PARKS
Impossible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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 what was going on. They talked about the little town-
MARCUS PARKS
Not everybody, it was like more of an open secret in certain areas of the country.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Los Alamos, the people when they started, when they arrived, right, the whole town was like yeah, they're building some kind of atomic bomb.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like they literally knew something-
MARCUS PARKS
Well they didn't know atomic bomb, they knew building some kind of a weapon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did meet a man in a porkpie hat with a cigarette in his mouth who was like hello, my name is Mr. Johnson. Yes, we're doing some experiments here.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they were like no, you're super famous nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
MARCUS PARKS
You're also greatly overestimating the reach of a famous scientist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well the kids, they talked about this but there was two kids that were like he was famous.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was on newspapers, people knew about this guy. It was just different.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm also greatly underestimating how smart people used to be and how much they used to read.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They used to read stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they knew, he was like a celebrity. So it's like they're doing something secret.
MARCUS PARKS
Something.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Sounds like a fucking great day to be a kid with a couple of friends, get on your bicycles, go sniff around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the real Stranger Things.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. It sounds awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. All of a sudden all these fucking European dudes are just showing up in their small towns in New Mexico.
BEN KISSEL
Trippy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) We're just here for the wonderful colors of the New Mexican background.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And then of course you get those new restaurants. It must be a good day to be in Los Alamos.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, there 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 all go eat. It was a green chili burger that they all loved.
MARCUS PARKS
I love green chilies. I love green chili burgers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me too, I do.
BEN KISSEL
I don't need my spice on my burgers. They called me gas man, how do they know I have gas? Soup of the day.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing about these security measures, that's the thing about all of the CIA shit, all of 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 toppest of top secret. And that wasn't even to mention all the other little spies peppered throughout.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you remember at the time they were our allies. So there were a lot of people, the spies, quote unquote "spies" truly involved here were some of Oppenheimer's students who he brought in to be like assistants and people who would 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, blah, blah, blah. But it shows, I was watching a great interview with a CIA guy who talked about the quote unquote "human tactics" that you have to do in order to flip people to give you information. And what they do is very human things. This one guy was talking about how he he was trying to get information from some country, it sounded like he was Iran or something, and 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 could always come to America and you know we could hook you up. And he was like no, I'm not right.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then the CIA dude remained actual friends with this guy for 10 years just waiting for the day when his shithead boss, very human, 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.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so it's like I'm helping you, now it's this kind of thing. It's like what the cops say about like let me help you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is like never real.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so these guys got flipped as little spies off of their just straight up naivete. They looked at him being like they played on these things and we learned from the KGB and the KGB learned from us. And we created a fun espionage group family.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Espionage indeed. And of course when it comes to the Middle East, when you text them something very funny, they text back HALOL.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He hasn't heard a single thing in minutes.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, all right, HALOL.
MARCUS PARKS
HALOL, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're talking, they're looking at me, I don't know what's happening.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
HALOL.
BEN KISSEL
HALOL.
MARCUS PARKS
You just heard the word Iran and you stopped thinking.
BEN KISSEL
No, I remember everything you said. Yeah, they wanted to work with us. He got sick of his boss and then he came over here and worked with us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
That's how it works.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure. Well the worst part about all of these spies, like all these guys working for the Soviet Union, feeding information to the Soviet Union, this was what McCarthy and all the rest of those assholes used when they were like-
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah,
MARCUS PARKS
Even one communist in the State Department is one too many, shit like that. Because it had happened.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Like this one dude-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was happening, it was presently happening.
MARCUS PARKS
Well one dude, Klaus Fuchs, McCarthy would say eight years ago Klaus Fuchs fed information to the Soviets and they got the bomb two years before they should have. Because it happened. But you know of course America, we're known for over correcting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a good term.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Kinda, yeah. Sorta.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was the 20 year war that we just did in the Middle East.
MARCUS PARKS
Over correcting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, okay.
BEN KISSEL
Well yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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 perimetered by barbed wire, almost no one had a telephone, and everyone had badges and driver's licenses with ID numbers but no names.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a white badge.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anybody with a white badge was allowed. Because Oppenheimer was also breaking a bunch of rules, saying like-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. All the scientists were.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The only way for this to work is we need to have a weekly meeting where everybody who's working on everything in this base comes together and we talk about it. And Groves was like no.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's literally why we do things covertly the way we do them, we separate.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's about compartmentalization.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Sure, makes sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Oppenheimer was like do you want this done now or do you want this done five years from now?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so that's what they did, they basically said okay, fuck the rules for now. But again, it would all deeply punish Oppenheimer in the future.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. And everyone at Los Alamos, they all had the same address, PO Box 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 PO Box 1663 as the address.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So funny.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You could just mail shit to the Manhattan Project. I guess you have to.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so. I'd mail them with some erotic magazines, Fluppers.
MARCUS PARKS
Fluppers.
BEN KISSEL
Dolphin themed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They definitely need to be jerked off.
BEN KISSEL
They do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Scientists are horny.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, they're some of the horniest. Because they have the egos of an actor, the face of a scientist, and then the desire of just some prisoner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are very...
BEN KISSEL
They're horny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was a lot of beavers getting snacked on.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Now when it came to compartmentalization of knowledge, Leslie Groves 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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
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 WWII was over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Everybody knew that the Russians were the next enemy except for all of the people that found this literature in college at the time period, which is what Oppenheimer says later on 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 all of these philosophies.
BEN KISSEL
Guilty!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You're guilty!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he wouldn't give up other names. And then also it was a man by the name of Chevalier that was a French professor, it was Oppenheimer's best friend and he was a card carrying communist. And he did a thing where Oppenheimer 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 a thin tie on at this point.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I went to a couple of meetings back in the day. But this guy comes up to dinner and basically says you know you should sell all of your information to Russia, not even understanding that everything's wired for sound.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so this little offhanded remark... And both his wife, Kitty and Oppenheimer was like no, that's treason, we're not gonna do that. But because the question was even asked, he was immediately fucked and everything was recorded.
MARCUS PARKS
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 as 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 set it and forget it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well why not? I mean that's what you do to him. You set him and forget him. There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes!
BEN KISSEL
He's the Ron Popeil of presidents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No president spared.
BEN KISSEL
Not at all.
MARCUS PARKS
But perhaps the most consequential of Leslie Grove's 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.
BEN KISSEL
May I just say one thing? Can we put a smiley face on the bomb? Or maybe we could put a little tail on it.
MARCUS PARKS
Hi there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi there!
BEN KISSEL
Hi there! Hey there! Whoa there!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it was definitely called Fat Man and Little Boy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Was it Little Boy?
MARCUS PARKS
Little Boy, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Little Boy, that's ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
They were named after characters in the Maltese Falcon. Fat man, Little Boy, and Thin Man.
BEN KISSEL
Maltese... I love when they let that dog on the back of that falcon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People say I was made in the lab, Kissel was made by god.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
You know what's interesting? The dog in Neverending Story, isn't he a bit of a Maltese falcon?
BEN KISSEL
He is.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a flying Maltese.
BEN KISSEL
He is a massive Maltese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel the shame.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel the shame for the audience.
BEN KISSEL
Also the fucking story did end.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So Neverending Story, well what are these credits then?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's about the idea of imaginations, the neverending story is-
BEN KISSEL
That movie made me too sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is a very sad movie. But the neverending story is the story that we all share in the world of imagination.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
We did get hit hard with some sad ass movies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But it was good for us.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now the kids just have the fucking recession.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. And then they got that movie Cars which is all about gas prices.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unbelievable.
MARCUS PARKS
The hopelessness of having no future.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, how cars can't reproduce.
BEN KISSEL
All of the shows were about that.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What this teaches me is again that conspiracies work if they are small. Conspiracy happens in choke points of information that then just shatters everything. You basically create a shield against any sort of objective look at the information inside of the conspiracy by keeping it between three people, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You make it a small deal. Like JFK, the secret service fighting over his body when he's leaving, the conspiracy was happening in that moment.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's when it moved on.
BEN KISSEL
Cover ups happened very fast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very fast.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The secret service saying like do not let anyone examine this body because then they will find out we accidentally killed him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you look at MK Ultra which is also another size of this, right, the size of quote unquote "conspiracy". But again, everybody knew that we were doing it but the way that they hit that was instead of doing it out loud like the Manhattan Project did, they just did it real quiet and just gave money everywhere. And just if you touched any of that M K Ultra money, you're now M K Ultra.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was a trickster.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He found a hole in the security fence.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He's out for a stroll, oh look, there's a hole.
BEN KISSEL
There's a hole.
MARCUS PARKS
So just for fun he checked out of the base, snuck back in through the hole, and checked out again.
BEN KISSEL
Guys, you wouldn't believe what I've been doing. I was walking and I found a hole. And then I walked back-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Richard Feynman. That's him.
BEN KISSEL
And then I went in through the hole, I'm gonna go back out through the hole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is Richard Feynman. Complex ideas, simple explanation.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Simplified. He didn't go back in the hole, he got out of the hole.
BEN KISSEL
You don't know what I did in that hole.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he went back to the gate and he checked out again and he kept just going around and around in a circle until someone said hey, wait a minute.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey buddy!
BEN KISSEL
I don't want to tell you but this is what I call mousing around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you seen any Richard Feynman? I should send you him explaining fire. You would like Richard Feynman.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause that's what he does, he entertains us boobs.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'll take it.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These scientists are getting too casual.
BEN KISSEL
Man, I'm mousing around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now you're fucking dead mousing around. Like the DJ.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh.
BEN KISSEL
Come on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, I like it.
BEN KISSEL
Can we get something fun?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Death Room.
BEN KISSEL
Something great.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Y and W.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dr. Mr. Shitfucks Pancake Fuck.
BEN KISSEL
There we go, something fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Well there at Site W in Hanford, Washington, almost 50,000 people mostly brought up from the South were hired by the DuPont company to build the site. Although very few of them knew what they were actually building. Some thought it was a sandpaper factory.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. That sounds like a real answer.
BEN KISSEL
Sand?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
A sandpaper factory?
MARCUS PARKS
A sandpaper factory. Others who had to be fucking absolute morons thought they were building FDR's winter palace.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sounds like some of them have been educating themselves on YouTube.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
In reality though, Hanford site was a part of General Groves' 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the key is being able to be dropped from an airplane. Because the way they first kind of posited the atomic bomb is that we'll put it in a ship and we'll float a ship because close to the fucking edge of the land-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As possible and then set it off. But apparently that'd be like bad.
MARCUS PARKS
That's be bad.
BEN KISSEL
Bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you'd make a big like tsunami, there's like a lot of issues.
BEN KISSEL
Well you're gonna wake up Godzilla.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well speaking of which-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's gonna be like let me sleep, I'm snoozing here.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
And speaking of which, I got one word for you. Fukushima.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Remember how much radiation that introduced into the ocean that we're still fucking dealing with.
BEN KISSEL
That's why the fish is tasting so good these days.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like a little radiation with my tuna.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Now 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's definitely a security risk because they were really getting kind of like loose with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well to the point of it being a bummer, the scientists working on the bomb knew exactly what sort of effects it would have. There is no ignorance to be pleaded here.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Besides producing an explosion that would vaporize anyone caught in the blast, scientists guessed that any person within 1000 yards of the explosion point would suffer severe psychological effects. And not like super cool Incredible Hulk effects either.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But honestly I wouldn't like a bunch of Incredible Hulks walking around either.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No. It would be fun if you were the Hulk but also very difficult.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a curse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But if everyone was the Hulk?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It is a curse, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's very much a curse. You know originally the Hulk would come out at night.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. What's the sound of one hand not happy? There it is. That's the sound when Marcus talks about comic books that I'm hearing.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a very simple origin story.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now we're not talking Incredible Hulk shit, we're talking melted innards, we're talking bodies decomposing from the inside out before the affected victim even dies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kinda wish I died first.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that would have been nice.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The other countries working on the atomic bomb never talked about radiation sickness.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this was one of our most closely held secrets-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we knew it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is the fact that this thing is gonna make whatever land is underneath this thing uninhabitable for like 100 years.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
MARCUS PARKS
Well
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Which element you use. Certain elements have longer half lives. That's the whole point of Dr. Strangelove. Cobalt-Thorium-G.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then also the idea of how it explodes, cause 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 the site and not on the site.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well now they poison our water with a bunch of other stuff too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that exciting?
MARCUS PARKS
But while the plutonium produced at Hanford 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You see, that's cool.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but it's still just a letter.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but it's still Site X.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Site X.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They put in some ramps too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
X is a cool letter.
MARCUS PARKS
That was in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They also had a five man team inventing, being like (German accent) what if a skate was in one line? Make it like a sword.
BEN KISSEL
Get him a roller blade.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) It's a roller sword!
BEN KISSEL
A roller blade.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) No, that's dumb. Roller knife.
BEN KISSEL
There we go.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at Site X, 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 a contraption called a calutron which required a 44 acre, mile long, four story high plant that required hundreds of miles of airtight piping all welded together just to make it work.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. I think that was actually just put into the new omnibus bill. That's a little political humor. That was just put into the debt ceiling bill.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Make the house bigger.
MARCUS PARKS
Well interestingly when these calutrons were first built at UC Berkeley, they were only allowed to be used by men with PhDs. But with the war-
BEN KISSEL
Pretty hot dicks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Physically warm penises.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But with the war on, the calutrons in Oak Ridge were operated almost entirely by young women right out of the Tennessee school system. And they did just fine.
BEN KISSEL
Rosie the Riveter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, just tell them how to do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Really the biggest risk with the calutron-
BEN KISSEL
You don't mansplain that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just go-
BEN KISSEL
You mansplain the bomb to them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Listen little lady, all you gotta do is sit in your precious little chair, all right, and make sure the atoms go zip zap zoop-a-zoop, all right. I'll see you later.
MARCUS PARKS
See you later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get outta here, nice bottom.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa. This was the 40s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was.
MARCUS PARKS
Well really the biggest risk with the calutron was that it involved huge magnets that were so strong that they would smash the insides of your watches if you got too close. This of course resulted in accidents. On the worst end of it, a guy walked into the room containing an active magnet while carrying a big steel plate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(humming nonchalantly)
BEN KISSEL
Where the fuck did he get that?
MARCUS PARKS
Just fucking Roger Rabbit walks into the room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Somebody left this outside in the hall! Why you left it outside? This is the lab!
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a fucking cartoon.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That sucks, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
And everyone else is like turn off the goddamn magnet! Turn off the magnet! And then quite coldly and somewhat cinematically, the scientist in charge said that the war was killing 300 people per hour and if I shut down that magnet, it's gonna take days to restabilize it. So you weigh the lives of thousands of people vs that one man. And besides, he looked over, he's like the guy's fine. Look at him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's just going help! Help! Feeling like I'm on a refrigerator!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Sounds like that guy was mousing around.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The scientist said look, he's just stuck. Get some fucking two by fours and pry him off.
BEN KISSEL
What a dork.
MARCUS PARKS
And tell him not to be such a fucking idiot next time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I could definitely see this being some comedian's grandfather.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, for sure.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So dumb. Bad name.
MARCUS PARKS
Bad name.
BEN KISSEL
Tube Alloy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a bad name.
MARCUS PARKS
Bad name.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Although none had quite as big of an adventure getting here than famed Danish physicist Niels Bohr, creator of the atomic model we still use today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) I am a bit of a difficult man.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
See Bohr was Jewish and when the Nazis invaded Denmark, he was one of 8000 Jews to be smuggled out of the country by the Danish underground.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Bohr ended up in Stockholm, unaware that the Gestapo had ordered Bohr in particular to be seized at all costs. Bohr however was not a man known for his discretion nor his common sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he's a scientist.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact it was a small miracle that Niels Bohr even survived childhood, much less Europe during WWII.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His brain was for thinking, not for doing stuff.
BEN KISSEL
You could say the same about all of us, couldn't you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love history.
BEN KISSEL
Big head. That's why he's smart.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love history, man. Because he just had too big of a head not to be found.
BEN KISSEL
I believe it, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually heard Boar's Head is really good if you slice it thinly.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed. I actually think they monopolized the entire meat industry in many parts of this country and I think it's a substandard meat product.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We've already got into this on Side Stories, please don't.
BEN KISSEL
But you agree with me, Marcus. Boar's Head is average at best.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, I do agree with you there. Yeah. I wish I could find a place where I could get sliced ham that wasn't Boar's Head.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know why the fuck... We need to move.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish either one of you knew a single thing.
BEN KISSEL
We have to move on though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But yeah, about a single thing that matters. Because that is both incorrect.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Bohr was also incapable of shutting his mouth or remembering that he was actually in hiding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sorry!
MARCUS PARKS
For example, whenever the phone in his Stockholm hideout rang, he would lunge for the receiver before anyone could answer it and say:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) Yeah, this is Bohr, here's Bohr, very secret scientist. Yeah, I'm in Stockholm.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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 him survive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) I just feel that there are many ways that a trombone can be played with the nose. No, I am a scientist. Look at me, everybody listen.
BEN KISSEL
I like this guy.
MARCUS PARKS
And the operation became even more dangerous when it was discovered that they didn't have a helmet that was big enough to fit him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really crazy.
BEN KISSEL
That is funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about that. That's how big your head is.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But because Bohr didn't listen, he didn't know that when the mosquito reached altitude, he was supposed to use an oxygen mask. Therefore in mid babble while they were going up in the air, Bohr very suddenly passed out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) I sometimes feel that metal (trails off)...
BEN KISSEL
You know what? That's a great way to fly.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Fall asleep, pass out.
MARCUS PARKS
And the British crew thought they'd accidentally killed one of the most brilliant minds of the century.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So funny.
MARCUS PARKS
But when they landed, Bohr suddenly woke up alert and chipper, saying that he just had the most wonderful nap.
BEN KISSEL
Oh good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) It's just nice to take a break.
BEN KISSEL
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Bohr 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. Bohr of course though, he had retained nothing because he was a fucking awful listener.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he was like (Danish accent) but I remember you better be good at it.
BEN KISSEL
I know that. Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Well all Bohr 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.
BEN KISSEL
All right, get on with it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well Werner 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 Niels Bohr was like I will never, I'm Jewish.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right, it's not gonna work out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 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-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) Guess what everybody? Guess what?
BEN KISSEL
Yes?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) What is this big circle, you made a whole town?
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing, he showed up in England and they're like guess what? We're also working on an atomic weapon and you're going-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) It's called Tube Alloy.
MARCUS PARKS
He said no, no, no, you're going to America and you're gonna be working on the Manhattan Project.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. He's gonna miss all the full English breakfasts that he could have had. That's sad.
MARCUS PARKS
Best breakfast in the fucking world. But the trip to Los Alamos was of course another fraught journey. He almost immediately forgot his codename on the train ride to New Mexico. And having forgotten his codename, he immediately began using his real name, introducing himself as physicist Niels Bohr.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) Hello, my name is physicist Niels... Fuck.
BEN KISSEL
Strawberry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) Niels Nohr. Hello, name's physicist Niels Nohr.
BEN KISSEL
They gotta give him a name that he'll remember. Something fruit related. What does he like, shoes?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) Shiels. Kliels. Miels.
BEN KISSEL
There you go, Kliels. You're Kliels now.
MARCUS PARKS
And he'd also talk to anyone and everyone about nuclear fission.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Danish accent) Have you heard about the bomb? Yeah, we're really making good headway.
MARCUS PARKS
His absent mindedness 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 escort Bohr the rest of the way. He pretty much just held on to his collar and said shut the fuck up.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you're coming with me now.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But perhaps Bohr's greatest treasure was a drawing Heisenberg had done of a Nazi heavy water nuclear reactor. But Bohr and 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.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No, you don't want to get messed around with by a dirty bomb.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No, you don't. No, you don't.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Hey buddy, what's wrong with you? You're covered in mud. Yeah, dirty bomb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is really good. Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
That's great. Was that the one that you were thinking of and then you abandoned but then you thought to try it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, their lips are moving. They've stopped.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Their lips have stopped moving and I...
BEN KISSEL
A lot of people say I'm like Niels Bohr.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know it's true.
BEN KISSEL
I got a big old fucking head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You do.
BEN KISSEL
Fuck. I sleep on planes great.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then the radiation sickness will set in. So they actually, it was like well at least with the atomic bomb we kill you up top.
BEN KISSEL
It's real nice, we're kinda being nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we're kinda being nice with it.
MARCUS PARKS
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 Scuttle plan called Operation Peppermint.
BEN KISSEL
See now that's fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like Operation Peppermint.
BEN KISSEL
Operation Peppermint.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they shipped out Geiger counters, they included-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's where 'The Bastard Brigade', it covered that one of the guys in the bastard brigade was that was one of his jobs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Was that he had to go and try to check every bomb hole for radiation.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also I didn't know that Moe Berg tried to kill Werner Heisenberg.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well we'll get to that next episode. Yeah, yeah, 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
At least maybe. And of course that deadened us even further as to what we could be capable of unleashing upon civilians.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a real plan.
MARCUS PARKS
They later said like it was an academic exercise but...
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was in the Manhattan Project. Everything was an academic exercise, it was extremely serious.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
All they gotta do is get Monsanto on the case and they'll be posioned for sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Monsanto was involved in the Manhattan Project.
BEN KISSEL
That's why me and Neil Young don't like him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these fears were of course only made worse by Nazi blustering. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, always the troublemaker, he announced that Germany would soon unleash a revolutionary uranium torpedo on the Allies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(German accent) We will spread that uranium torpedo all over the chest of the Allies.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
And 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
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 gonna have the weapon.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as Leslie Groves saw it, part of his job in constructing the bomb was to also actively prevent Germany from getting the bomb.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's a crazy story.
BEN KISSEL
What we'll do is we will hide all of the secrets in hot sauce. There no way the German can handle the hot sauce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's important, we'll put it inside this case of salt and pepper. They'll never see it.
BEN KISSEL
Well the Germans have a little bit of salt and pepper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
A little bit.
BEN KISSEL
They don't like the hot sauce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, there's a general brat hot sauce, I actually have it right now form a buddy of mine who made it and sent it to the studio. It's like a nice light, it's kind of a Bavarian hot sauce. It's very tasty, it's a little bit of a medium range hot sauce.
BEN KISSEL
Did they have it in the 40s? When was it made?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Am I a time traveler?
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Am I a time traveler?
BEN KISSEL
I don't know. I just don't think of Germans and hot sauce.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I don't either.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They have hot sausages.
BEN KISSEL
Buddy, buddy. Hey buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are you calling me on the phone? I'm here. I'm here on the show with you. Why are you calling me? You just did the phone call like-
BEN KISSEL
We'll talk about sausages later. Click.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but people don't know that you're doing it.
BEN KISSEL
Click.
MARCUS PARKS
Well we'll hear the story of the German... Well we'll hear... Goddamnit. We will hear the story of the intelligence units that are made up of scientists and soldiers on the next episode.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But meanwhile, President Roosevelt was starting to use stronger language when discussing the Axis powers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna rough them up. We're gonna push them down.
MARCUS PARKS
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Most crucial were the islands of Saipan and Tinian. Saipan was taken first in a horrifically bloody battle that resulted in the loss of 3000 Americans and tens of thousands of Japanese.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of those things where you listen to Marcus talk about these subjects.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he likes them.
MARCUS PARKS
I find them interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's doing the (whispers) fascinating.
BEN KISSEL
War, what is it good for?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marcus' intellect and his hobbies.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus' research.
MARCUS PARKS
I do, I find it extraordinarily interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It's almost like you like the world that we live in because you enjoy all the violence.
MARCUS PARKS
I also enjoy utopian sci-fi such as Star Trek.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Star Trek is full of violence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah of course but it's also-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's more stun. They stun you.
BEN KISSEL
It's utopian? Star Trek is utopian?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Back on Earth it's utopian. Everyone's having a great time back on Earth.
BEN KISSEL
They didn't even let Worf fucking control the goddamn controls even if everyone else died!
MARCUS PARKS
They absolutely let Worf control everything in Deep Space Nine, he became more of a commander, he got a lot more... Well he wasn't the commander.
BEN KISSEL
Why did he have to work so much harder?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Am I gonna have to do a second nerd alert on other people that are not me?
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
No, Sisko still commanded the Defiant. But Worf did get a promotion when he was assigned to Deep Space Nine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then Sisqó did the Thong Song.
BEN KISSEL
Thong, th-thong, thong, thong.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 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.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Goddamn, there's a reason why we talk about Iwo Jima to this day.
BEN KISSEL
Well it is true, right, that their emperor was their god. So this would be-
MARCUS PARKS
It's somewhat of an oversimplification of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Richard Feynman.
BEN KISSEL
They were very dedicated.
MARCUS PARKS
They were extremely dedicated.
BEN KISSEL
They were not gonna fucking cower, they were not gonna turn back and run.
MARCUS PARKS
They weren't gonna surrender.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
From these massive battles they would have thousands upon thousands of casualties. And you might capture like a dozen Japanese soldiers.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like a perfect storm of immense chaos. They don't want to surrender and then we're like but you have to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to do though.
BEN KISSEL
Unconditionally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there's some gray in there as it goes because as the war goes on and people going hungry and they can't eat, eventually that fever will go away, it will begin to wear off as they go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dan Carlin's 'Supernova in the East' really does talk about-
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This build up extremely in heavy, heavy detail. It's all from the Japanese perspective.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he has a great way of like explaining the Japanese mindset when it comes to warfare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He says the Japanese are just like anybody else, only more so. You get it?
BEN KISSEL
More so than anybody else.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Richard Feynman.
BEN KISSEL
I actually have a question about their payment issues, Dan Carlin.
MARCUS PARKS
Dan Carlin.
BEN KISSEL
Difficult to get the episodes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he's behind a paywall because he deserves the money, he works very hard on his show.
BEN KISSEL
I was trying to get an episode, I couldn't get the episode.
MARCUS PARKS
He's also an old school guy. I mean he's been doing podcasting since 2007.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think he's ever shown the top of his head. You ever seen it?
MARCUS PARKS
He's a cap guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Him and Oppenheimer are very, very similar.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're hat-faced people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Carlin's a hat-faced guy.
BEN KISSEL
He is?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he is. But hey, you know what? More power to him.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It keeps his knowledge in.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Just wanted to listen to the episode, that's all.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But that's the thing about Saipan is that 14,000 of those casualties, 14,000 of those deaths, those were civilians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
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 to clear bunkers with flame throwers loaded with napalm fuel as quickly as possible.
BEN KISSEL
Right. That's just a way to clear a bunker. Is it... Did they not like care enough to really check?
MARCUS PARKS
No because 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. I mean the Japanese were absolutely an incredibly formidable enemy.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know. I just feel like they could have checked a couple of the houses and not burnt down so many civilians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would say it seems like it's complicated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm not gonna say that it was justified or anything like that.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's bad. It's bad but it's war, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And of course this policy became much worse in Vietnam when they started burning down entire villages.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And they started killing entire populations just in case they might be hiding a Vietcong somewhere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Plus I know these guys had to come back and immediately buy a microwave, get married, have a child. You know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Just immediately.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Immediately. Forget all that.
BEN KISSEL
That's the most stressful part.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it was so difficult.
BEN KISSEL
But also this was DuPont as well, right? They're the ones who created the flamethrower. Was that DuPont or J&J?
MARCUS PARKS
Can't tell you that for sure.
BEN KISSEL
It was one of these motherfuckers.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it was, remember Parker Bradley? Milton Parker Bradley.
BEN KISSEL
Well they made the goddamn Ouija board.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot of flamethrowers. They did.
BEN KISSEL
They made the Ouija.
MARCUS PARKS
Well to the point of them just coming back and buying microwaves and having families and all that, when you talk about guys who took Saian, in WWII documentaries when you see soldiers talk about battles they've been in, they're just like yeah, we went in and that was the-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Texas Pete, he was from Montana. We went out there and blasted Nazis out-
BEN KISSEL
Why'd you call him Texas?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's something he said.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just something about him, it's just his hat. He has a hat on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But SaiPan 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 1000 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 1000 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Before we started killing them. Like literally we rolled into watching them jump off a cliff. And it's just a lot, it's really fucked up.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we didn't do the rape, torture, and castrate but we will set you on fire. So at least there is that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we will vaporize you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Okay. Well it doesn't sound like a very fun ride to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No. But with the fall of Saipan, the war was effectively lost for the Japanese and anyone with half a brain in the Japanese military knew it. Saipan put B-29 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. Saipan was also important, the battle of Saipan 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 Saipan, 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, they're also starving to death.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They've been in a full on embargo across the line, they can't get anything, they can't get anything.
BEN KISSEL
Years, right? Years and years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so it slowly but surely fucks with the morale of a country.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how you do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you really want to fuck with somebody, CIV VI.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
MARCUS PARKS
But most consequently, the taking of Saipan was the prelude to the taking of the island of Tinian. Here Marines took the island partly by using 24 mechanized flamethrowers affixed to what were called Satan Tanks.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! Satan, Satan, Satan.
BEN KISSEL
Satan Tanks?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, you give me one Satan Tank, I'm gonna get a lot of stuff figured out by the next debt ceiling.
BEN KISSEL
I thought you wanted a Killdozer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No but if I had one-
BEN KISSEL
Now you want a Satan Tank?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It'd just be cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's not gonna be good for the brand. Satanism's under heat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That'd be fun to do.
BEN KISSEL
That's a fart, that's a fart. But you know what'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.
MARCUS PARKS
Eventually.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Or they don't.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But it just kind of sucks because again, it's just the civilians that get fucked.
MARCUS PARKS
Always.
BEN KISSEL
All the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every flame thrower is just a fart gun. But then you put a flame at the end of it.
BEN KISSEL
Well if you have a lot of hot sauce.
MARCUS PARKS
But after the island 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 Enola Gay which would truly introduce hell on earth to the Japanese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And how brave it was for a plane to come out at that time period when the whole world was against it.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna do that?
MARCUS PARKS
It was named after his mother. His mother was named Gay.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, she was a massive lesbian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's pride month.
MARCUS PARKS
It's with that hell on earth and the covert operations concerning the German atomic program that we'll return next week with part three of our series on the Manhattan Project.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And again, don't worry, we're gonna get to the sloughing.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. I am good. I like the skin on my body not to be boiling, I like the innards to be nice and 98 degrees.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You want to keep them at a simmer.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it'll probably be episode four when we truly get to the sloughing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Just wait though, sloughing's a-coming.
BEN KISSEL
Sloughing's a-coming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this is again very History Channel but I think it's important to learn this shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As a person that like again, if you're into woo-woo topics, we're gonna get to aliens. Don't you fucking worry. Because it's all legit. It's the same mechanisms.
BEN KISSEL
I mentioned this on Sirius, the people of Heaven's Gate, man, if they were alive today. You know they just fucked it up with the Hale-Bopp. This is their prime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude.
BEN KISSEL
Marshall Applewhite, if he would have just hung on, what was that 15 years ago now? Maybe more than that.
MARCUS PARKS
You're saying 1997 is 15 years ago?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Everything is 15 years ago to me. We are old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine him just being like that one weekend when they blew the four objects out of the sky, just being like well that was supposed to be our ride and now it's gone.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, that's true too!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a good way to keep pushing the envelope.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Keep on moving the goalposts.
MARCUS PARKS
And now he could just be going see?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See? See?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 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 then all of a sudden everyone's dead.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, well thank you for listening. Go to @benkissel1, my Instagram. I got a couple of dates. I can't wait to see you all in July.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, front row.
BEN KISSEL
Splash zone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you wear a shirt that says where you're from, what country you are, what race you are, Kissel's gonna fucking... He's ready to roast.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I'm ready to roast. You know I love my roast mode. Speaking of roasts, Spring-Heel'd Jack coffee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Spring-Heel'd Jack coffee obviously.
BEN KISSEL
Do we have any other announcements?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, not right now.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I'd say-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Z2comics.com, go and get the Last Comic Book on the Left Issue 3, it's beautiful.
MARCUS PARKS
It's absolutely beautiful. We just got the proof for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible. Both Henry and I have stories that we've written in this one.
BEN KISSEL
I'm working on one.
MARCUS PARKS
Ben's working on one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Kissel's got one.
BEN KISSEL
I've got my computer with me now, I'm gonna start click clacking on that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's nice. And we got a new episode of No Dogs In Space out where we did a bit of a coda to our Monks series where I cover another band who did Vietnam protest music. But they were a very dark group of GIs, active GIs.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Called the Covered Wagon Musicians who had a little song called Napalm Sticks To Kids, 1972.
BEN KISSEL
Well I guess not really upbeat then, is it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no.
BEN KISSEL
No. Keep on supporting all the shows here on the Last Podcast Network and our couple of shows that we do on Sirius. Thank you all so much for listening. Hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail the Satan Tank!
BEN KISSEL
The Satan Tank?
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me.
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations. I don't know if you're a warrior and you're like I'm in the Satan Tank, is it cool or horrifying?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's cool but I think it's very hot.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think it's fine. It's a light tank. So it is gonna be hot.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can get shot at.
BEN KISSEL
That's why we want it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You can get shot at.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.