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The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is a gold
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: fashioned barn burner of a stuff you Should Know type topic.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Woo whizbang Chuck.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: This was somebody sent this in as a suggestion recently.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I think, right, yeah, you know, I think you and
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I had both been aware of this story. But we
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: did get a recent suggestion from David Departcher.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, David Parcher, I think just a couple of weeks
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: ago sent in the suggestion and look at the timing.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you, David. And we're going to talk
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: about another David, that is David Hahn, the Nuclear Boy Scout.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And this is one of those where we owe a
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: huge debt to a single human because this story was
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: may have just gone fairly unnoticed as a pretty localized
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: local news paper item if it hadn't have been found
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: by a gentleman named Ken Silverstein, who ended up writing
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: a very large piece in Harper's Magazine and then a
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: book called The Radioactive Boy Scout colon the True story
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: of a boy in his backyard nuclear reactor, so big,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: thanks to Ken. A lot of this came from your work.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and shout out also to the journalists from the
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Natural Resources News Service, which is this investigative journalist group
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: that just as a public good like investigate stories and
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: then turn around and give them to news outlets. And
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: apparently that's how Ken came across the story and began
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: researching it. So there's two people that were responsible for
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: it at least.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and three because we have to count David Hahn,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the Michigan teenager who in the nineties managed to create
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: a nuclear reaction in the potting shed of his mom's house.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: It is a story that is interesting and amazing but
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: also very sad in its ending.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and technically we should thank five people because it
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: took Patty and Ken Han to reproduce and create David Hahn.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: So we're at five people now that we need to thank.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: All right, So David was born October nineteen seventy six.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: That's a year you were born.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah. I was just a couple months older than him.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and look what this guy did. Yeah, what have
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: you ever done?
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Thanks for that?
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: You gotta hit podcasts. You're not sweating it.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sweating.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: When he was a little And we say this because
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: it very much figures into the end of David's story.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: It's very sad. But his mother, Patty was diagnosed with
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: depression and paranoid schizophrenia, was hospitalized through his early childhood
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: off and on, and she would eventually take her own
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: life in nineteen ninety six.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that we'll play into the story later on.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: But Patty remains a character throughout most of it. So
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: too does David's father, Ken, who we mentioned. He's person five.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: We need to thank Patty and Ken got divorced, I
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: think when David was really little, like maybe a toddler,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: and Ken ended up marrying a coworker. Person number six
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: we need to thank Kathy missing. Ken and Kathy were
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: both engineers at General Motors. This whole thing took place
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: in the suburbs of Detroit, specifically Clinton Township, Michigan, specifically
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: later on, in a subdivision called Golf Manor as we'll see.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: But so David lives with Ken and Cathy, and then
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: on weekends he goes and stays with his mom, Patty
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: and her boyfriend. Person number seven who we need to
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: thank Michael Polassic, and they're the ones I believe who
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: lived in golf Manor and under by all accounts, like
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: David lived a pretty normal childhood, just doing normal childhood things.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until he was ten that his life found
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: its purpose, which is pretty early if you think about it,
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: for your life to find its purpose.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and by the way, if you live in golf Manor,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: hold your emails, we know you're in Commerce Township.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for that. I think his dad lived
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: in Clinton Township.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably like where I lived in New Jersey.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: It's like all these old townships just run together.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it looked like on the map.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the person we really need to thank this
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: is number eight.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Person eight.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Is, like you mentioned, when David was ten years old,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: his step mom's father, so I guess his step grandfather
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: if you count that as a thing. He was also
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: an engineer at GM. He gave a little David a
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: book called the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and little
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: David was fascinated with science and chemistry, but in particular
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: with the stories of Mary and Pierre Currie and their
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: radium discovery and the glow. I think the glow of
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: that whole thing really enthrall this young guy.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this book was heavily illustrated and like the instructions
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: kind of looked had the same look as like those
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Ripley's Believe it or not. Yeah, comic strips almost totally
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: something that would appeal to a kid that age are
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: a little older. You can find it online in its
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: entirety as a PDF. And I looked at that illustration.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: I don't really know what he saw, and it's actually
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: black and white that glows to some lines coming off
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: of a beaker or whatever.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: But imagination, my friend, for.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Some reason, it enthralled him so much so that within
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: two years of receiving that book, he was devouring his
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: father's chemistry textbooks at age twelve.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so he was. I mean, these were books that
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: were more advanced than his age. Clearly a smart guy.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: At the age of fourteen, he apparently made nitroglycerin by himself,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: which evidently isn't the hardest thing to do, but is
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: very dangerous to do. There are other stories like he
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: brought wanted to make his own fireworks boy scout camp,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: so we brought some powdered magnesium. It ended up catching
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: on fire and ruined a tent. So what else. He
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: tried to develop a self tanning method that didn't work out, right.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he overdosed on Kantha's anthen, which I can't remember
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: which one which episode that came up in, but it's
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: a pigment that turned your skin orange from the inside out.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: And that's what he did. He was trying to come
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: up with a self tanning method that didn't use any
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: kind of UV radiation.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no comment, but he was that kind of dude.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: He would just turn up at like a Scout meeting
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: or something bright orange and be like, yeah, too much
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Cantha's anthen.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: So yeah, he's exactly that kid. He's also the kind
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: of kid who essentially destroys his bedroom because he's doing science.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: The walls were wrecked, the carpet was stayed, they had
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to move the carpet out. Eventually, his dad was like, listen,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: this is getting serious. You're destroying our home. You got
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: to move into the basement first of all, and when
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: we're not here, you can't be in here either. They
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: took away equipment, they took away some chemicals, and finally
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: they said, all right, this is out of hand. You
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: can't do this anymore. So they said, all right, I'll
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: do it, like every divorce kid says, I'll do it
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: at the other.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Parents house, that's right, And so he did. He ended
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: up setting up a lab in his mom's potting shit
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: and golf manor in commerce township. And this is where
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: the story really starts to kind of take off, because
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: his dad was getting really worried that his son was
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: basically creating and selling drugs, like that's what he was
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: doing with his chemistry experiments, and so like they would
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: he and his stepmom would drop in in the library
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: when he was supposedly there to see if he was there.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Like they really did not trust this fascin with chemistry,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: which I mean, I can understand if your kid blows
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: himself up a couple of times, you're like, what are
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: you doing exactly here?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So I don't know if he knew that David went
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: and set up a lab in his mom's potting shed
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: or not and just was like, it's fine as long
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: as side of my house. I'm not sure. I've never
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: seen that either way. But one thing that he did
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: do to try to be like, okay, I think you're
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: creating drugs. You're probably on them, you may or may
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: not be selling them. None of those seem to be true.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: From what I can tell. You need to become an
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: eagle scout. And he pushed his son to become an
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: eagle scout.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's exactly what he did, as we will
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: later find out. But when it came to time per
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: merit badge selection, he said, I want the one that
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: says atomic energy, and the scout master said, I think
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: he told the writer of the book, no one had
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: ever chosen that before in the history of the troop, right,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: So it kind of reminds me of the Brian Coxceine
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and Rushmore with Bill Murray when he says he's one
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: of the worst students we've got. I can just picture
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Brian Cox saying that that no one's ever tried for
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: this badge before. But it was a legit badge. It's
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: kind of funny that it existed. It's different now, as
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: we'll see. But in nineteen sixty three they introduced the
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: atomic energy badge. It came with a pamphlet that they
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: created with the nuclear energy industry that turned out to
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: have a lot of really useful information. Almost like a
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: starter kit on how to like source radioactive elements in
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: the real world. Yeah, and how to get your own
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: reactor going.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the projects you could do was to
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: build your own Geiger Counter. Like it was serious stuff.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe so legit that, Like I said, the boy
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Scouts would eventually change that badge. I think probably because
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of what happened with David in two thousand and five.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: They replaced it with the Nuclear Science Badge.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, so he's still working on the original, the Atomic
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Energy Badge from nineteen sixty three. Right, Oh, yeah, So
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: he's just devouring this. He's having the best time. He
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: visits a hospital ward to learn about X rays, which
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: is part of the Merit Badge certification. The thing that
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: really changed things, though, Chuck, is he decided just these
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: things the Merit Badge was having him do. Like one
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: of the things was draw a diagram of a fission reaction,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: or build a model of a nuclear reactor, but a
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: model like a cardboard model basically, or paper machine, or yes,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: or I will create my own nuclear reactor in my
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: mom's potting shed. He decided he was so psyched about
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: atomic energy that he wanted to do it. Himself.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I guess you do the model and
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you're like, hey, that wasn't so hard. Let me see
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: if I can do it for real. And he wanted
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: to build, and you know, this shows that he was
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: a kid. I think. I don't think this was to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: cause harm. He wanted to build a neutron gun, and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the way I just for my research this is speculation.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: But it didn't seem like he was like I want
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: to build a neutron gun to try and like blow
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: up the city that I live in.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: It seemed more like a kid who was really into
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: science and sci fi and chemistry and wanted to make
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: a little pew pew gun.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think neutron gun is a it's a misleading term.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: I can't get the Nintendo Duck Hunt gun out of
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: my head whenever I hear neutron gun. But really, what
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: a neutron gun is, at least the one that David made.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: It's a block of lead with a cavity carved out,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: and you put radioactive material in the cavity and then
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: cover it over with like aluminum foil, and then you
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: just point the aluminum foil side of that block of
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: lead at what you want to irradiate, and then you
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: try to start a chain reaction, a nuclear reaction. That
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: seems to be the sum total of his goals. He
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: wasn't trying to build a bomb, he wasn't trying to
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: sell plutonium to the Libyans, he wasn't doing anything like that.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: He just wanted to see if he could start a
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: nuclear chain reaction, this thing that had fascinated him since
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: he was ten years old. And so we set about
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: doing that with help from this eagle scout merit badge pamphlet.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the whole thing that much more nuts.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And also by adopting a persona as a professor,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: because he starts writing into organizations, trying to get information,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: trying to get materials, trying to get schematics. He said
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: he was Professor Hahn that taught at his high school,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Chipawa Valley High School.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Oh goat and chipmunks are they? I don't know.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And over the next few years, basically and apparently you know,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: he he applied himself. He didn't apply himself in school.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: He was smart, but he was failing almost failing out,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: basically barely passing, like the math and English exams needed
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: to graduate eventually. But that is to say these letters
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: had like spelling errors and grammatical errors. It didn't seem
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: like they were written by a professor. But people bought it,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and before you know it, he's like corresponding as a
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: professor to these adults.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and these adults are just totally into this correspondence.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: They're really enjoying helping this who they think a high
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: school physics teacher learn the stuff he's looking for about
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: nuclear energy to ostensibly go and teach to the kids. Right,
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: So this correspondence is like genuine. The only thing illegitimate
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: about it was that he was misrepresenting who he actually was, Yeah,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: a professor rather than a high school student. But other
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: than that, everything else about it seems to be pretty neat.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, except for the fact that it's dangerous and illegal.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Yes. So one of the people that he corresponded with,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I think he corresponded with him the most, was named
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Donald erb e Erb and he was the guy who
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: was the head of the department that produces isotopes. If
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: you need isotopes, you can go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: This is not you, but like, if you are in
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: some sort of industry that uses isotopes, and this herb
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: will be like, I got you, I got you covered.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: For some reason, they come in these little baggies with
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: like card suits printed all over him. It's weird. That's
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: an herb kind of touch.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: It's so nice.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: But he was. He worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: and nobody helped David Hahn more than Donald erb did
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: again unwittingly.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, So should we take a break.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: We should?
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I was about to keep going, but
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: let's take a break, and we're going to talk about
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: his pursuit of radioactive materials right after this.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: M M.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: By the way, Chuck, it's the Chipewa Valley, Big Red,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: which appears to be a giant cardinal. If you ask me,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that was a that was a missed, missed opportunity. Chipmunks,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: chip chipmunks, the rabbit chipmunks.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it, all right. So when we left off,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: David han was getting serious about building this uh nuclear reactor.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: He needs material to do that, so and we should
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: point out that, you know, I said it was dangerous.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: It was dangerous. He did know this. He still pursued it,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: but he like he had a lead shield that he
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: worked with. He threw away his contaminated clothes. He left
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: his shoes in there and didn't take them in his house, so.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: It was like it was driving shoes, but in a
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: potting show he was building a breeder reactor.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Do you have driving shoes? Is that a thing?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: I know that it's a thing from watching old episodes
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: of Frasier.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I've never heard that.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, you've seen driving shoes. People wear them and they're
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: totally unaware that you're not supposed to wear them out
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: of your car. But it's like, if your car is
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: so nice, you take off your outdoor shoes and put
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: on your driving shoes that never leave your car, and
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: that way you don't get car dirty. Yeah.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I have seen them. I guess
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: I just you have. You did?
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: They're like they look kind of like a cross between
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: the loafer and a moccasin. And then the dead giveaway
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: is the tread on the bottom comes up the back
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: of the heel as well. Because of the position that
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: your foot is in when you're driving, it gives you grip.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna have to look this up. You've
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: seen them all right, all right, so that's amazing. Fifty
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: two years old never knew about this.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I was only probably forty when I learned about it,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: So I don't feel bad.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. So he starts looking for materials, and
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: these are just a few sort of stories about he
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: would go about that he wanted some amoricium two forty
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: one for this neutron gun. In the booklet that he
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: got from the Boy Scouts said you can get the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: stuff in smoke detectors. So he tries to steal them
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: from the Boy Scout camp, got caught and sent home early.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Then he writes smoke detector companies saying I need a
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: bunch of these things for a school project. Eventually one
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: company sold him one hundred broken ones for one hundred bucks.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Couldn't figure out how to find this amoresium, so got
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in touch with another smoke detector company. It was like, oh, well,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: here's where you find it, and was able to extract
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: amorsium enough to like weld together with a blowtorch.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, So remember I was talking about. The neutron gun
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: is a lump of lead with a cavity hollowed out
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: and then you put your radioactive material in the cavity
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: of lead. No radioactive material, that's right, Amrisium is I
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: looked up why it would be in smoke detectors. Did
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: you see why? No, it's really interesting just for a second.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: So a marisium it because of its radioactive decay. It
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: creates a flow of ions, positive and negative ions that
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: are are moved across like this metal plate. And there's
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: a constant movement of ions that this americium is creating
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: from the air around it. And when smoke interacts with
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: those ions, it actually breaks that flow. That flow is
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: detected by the smoke detector, which triggers it to go off.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Isn't that just so bizarre. That's how your smoke detector works.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: And that's how they still work.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, there's still a marisium in smoke detectors today.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: So you said he built his own Geiger counter. I
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: don't know if it was this one or if he
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: ended up getting the other one, but he would drive
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: around Upper Michigan with this Geiger counter on, just looking
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: for naturally occurring uranium out in the world. And then
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: eventually he's like, this isn't working out, so he got
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: a Czechoslovakian firm that the NRC told him about and
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: sourced uranium.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Or Yeah, he had that Geiger counter mounted to his
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: dashboard and apparently anytime he drove he had it turned on.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's what you gotta find this stuff.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: And he actually did find some stuff called pitch blend
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: and it's a source of low grade uranium and he
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: tried to extract it, but he couldn't purify it enough. So,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: like you said, he was like, well, just buy some
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: pure uranium from a firm in Czechoslovakia that he heard about,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: either from the pamphlet or from Donald or one of
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: the two.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Another thing he did was the little mantle like
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the little mesh sacks that you tie on to a
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: gas lantern. He bought thousands of those because they have
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: little tiny amounts of thorium two thirty two, and so
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: you know, he buys that of these from surplus stores,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: buys thousands of dollars in lithium batteries to extract lithium.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: So he's been very you know, I think, showing a
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: lot of initiative at least how to find this stuff.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like he's using is his after school
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: job money to buy one thousand dollars in lithium batteries
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: to purify the thorium that he got from the gas
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: lanterns that he purchased and extracted it from. Like, I
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: can't imagine how much time and effort this took. And
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: by the way, he did purify that thorium pretty well.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: I saw that he got it to nine thousand times
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: the level found in nature of radioactivity and about one
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventy times the level that you would need
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to possess.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: He also went around, of course, where you're going to
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: find old, dangerous radioactive things, junk yards and antique shops.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: So he would take that Geiger counter into a junk
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: shop or an antique store and he would walk around
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: until something lit up, like radium paint if you remember
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: our I think it was pretty excellent podcasts on the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Radium Girls, and he would find like radium paint in
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: an old clock.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he found a vial of paint just tucked
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: away inside of one and that then he really had
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: his radioactive material for his neutron gun. He actually stepped
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: it up and built a second gun. He'd also from
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: corresponding with Donald Herb, gotten even better at creating a
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: neutron gun that was going to be useful in creating
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: a nuclear reaction. He also found that when he used
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: the radium on I think the thorium that he purified,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: he was trying to trigger a chain reaction by bombarding
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: thorium with neutrons. That's what he was trying to do.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: He found that the thorium wasn't converting into uranium like
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: it was supposed to, so he contacted Donald RB and
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Donald ERB said, your neutrons are too fast. You got
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: to slow him down. One of the best ways to
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: slow him down is tritium. And he said, well, where
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: would I find tritium? And apparently they use tritium to
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: make the glowing sites on gun scopes and gun sights.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: So he ordered I think dozens of gun sights from
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Miller catalogs from stores, and then he would scrape the
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: tritium off and then send them back and say, I
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: need this site repaired. There's no tritium on it, and
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: they would put more tritium on it and send it back,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: and he just created a new pseudonym and send that back.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: And that's how methodical that kid was.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: So this is all kid stuff. He's like fourteen, fifteen
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: years old. Eventually he turned seventeen, and he says, all right,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I think I want to build an actual nuclear reactor.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: It's called a tiny breeder reactor. They've been around since
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties when the US developed them, when
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: we were you know, sort of the beginning of the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: age of trying to use nuclear power for electricity, and
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: they're like, well, these little tiny breeder reactors might be
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: a good way to extend the supply of fuel or something.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: It never quite worked out that way. I think they're
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: still working on that kind of thing in Russia and China,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: but it never really went off the ground. But it
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: was enough to inspire David to think that maybe I
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: can build a small thing like this in my mom's
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: potting garage or potting shed.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The difference between a breeder reactor and a regular
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: reactor is that you in a regular reactor, you just
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: use fuel and you get energy from the fuel. With
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: the breeder reactor, you get energy from the fuel, but
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: it also creates more fuel and you end up with
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: more fuel than you started with. I saw it liken
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: to leaving your house or the car with the half
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: a tank of gas and when you return home the
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: tank is full. That's kind of like what it does.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: And yet they just could never get it to work.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: But that's what he was trying to do. And the
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: reason why is because you start with uranium two thirty eight,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: and that's the most abundant uranium found in nature.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: That's right. So he doesn't have enough uranium, matter what
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: kind it is, to create an actual chain reaction for
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: normal reactors. So he says, maybe I can at least
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: do something like it. Seemed like he became sort of
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: obsessed just with this goal of creating some kind of
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: nuclear reaction himself, got a blueprint from one of his
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: dad's textbooks, took that emericium in the radium from his
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: neutron guns, mixed it with some aluminum, shaving some beryllium,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: wrap that up in aluminum foil, and basically you have
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: yourself a very small reactor core right there.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he created an atomic pile like the first one
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: that FORMI created in Chicago, but on a much much
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: smaller scale. But it worked like it worked. He created,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: like you said, a nuclear reactor, and it started a
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: nuclear chain reaction and it started to take off actually
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: pretty quickly.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got that Geiger counter and he's measuring this
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: thing like on a daily basis, and he's like it's
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: actually growing, like it's getting more radio active in here.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I imagine he was thrilled and also possibly a little
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: bit like Matthew Broderick in wargames where it's like, oh,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, like what have I done here, such
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that he was worried and took it apart.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: He did. Apparently he could detect it from five houses
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: down the street. And I looked up pictures of Golf
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Manner and I mean their yards are decent size, so
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: five houses away is a pretty good distance to be
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: able to pick up his nuclear reactor in his mom's
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: potting shed with his Geiger counter. And at that big
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: sideyards there, yeah, lots of big side yards. No zero lines, no, no, no,
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: nothing like that. No, this is Golf manner Man that
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: we're talking about. So he took it apart and he
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: just kind of distributed the different parts to try to
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: drop the radioactivity levels in his mom's potting shed and
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: he kind of went about his life after he disassembled
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: his reactor. He'd achieved his goal, but apparently he had
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: a penchant for stealing wheels and tires off of cars.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: He admitted as much in an interview later on as
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: an adult, and he seems to have gotten caught doing
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: that by the police shortly after he disassembled his reactor.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: And when the police caught him, they said, we're going
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: to search your car, and he said, go ahead, search
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: my car, but do not open that toolbox. That toolbox
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: is highly radioactive.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Is that a good cliffhanger for a break?
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: I think so. Imagine the cops going what they're.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Like, we got to listen to ads before we know
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: what happens. Sorry, all right, we'll be right back, all right.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: So it's August almost September nineteen ninety four. That reactor
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: is taking apart. I think you put the thorium in
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: a shoe box. The radium in the americium was in
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the shed still, and the rest is in the trunk
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: of his car. He's just been pulled over, like you said,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: because there was reports that he was stealing tires and wheels,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: and he said, warning that things radioactive don't open up
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: that toolbox. So they said, well, maybe we should. This
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: sounds like an ied to me and improvised explosive device.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Why don't we call him the bomb squad to be safe,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: called in the bomb squad, they said, this whole car
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: basically is radioactive, and all of a sudden, the Federal
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Radiological Emergency Response Plan is triggered, and the EPA and
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: the FBI and the INNER and the DOE are in
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the state and local authorities are all like trying to
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: not trying to get this kid, but trying to figure
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: out what in the world is going on with this kid.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's seventeen at the time still, and all of
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: a sudden, these huge agencies are like swooping down on
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: him to figure out what's going on. The thing is,
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: I guess they didn't think to ask the right questions
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: or their imaginations just didn't go as far as they
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: could have. But they seem to have in this initial
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: questioning not really have gotten any further than his car,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: And he didn't offer up any information whatsoever about his
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: actual like nuclear reaction experiments in his mom's potting shed.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: They didn't even know there was a potting shed at
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: his mom's house.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Really hard believe.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, but that's the level of questioning that this kid
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: was subjected to. And I mean, in retrospect, you're like,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: are you guys kidding? You didn't know about the potting
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: shed right off the bat. But if you're an FBI agent,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Department of Energy agent, and you're talking to a seventeen
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: year old kid, you're probably not going to assume that
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: because they have this stuff and a toolbox in their car,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: they actually were successfully creating nuclear chain reactions in their
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: mom's potting shed. I can kind of commiserate with that.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Sure, you probably assume you just got it at radiation
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: are pretty much so. A few months later is when
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: they finally got an expert from the state Department of
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Public Health to interview David more thoroughly, and that turned
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: up the potting shed. David's mom at this point had
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: gathered most of the radioactive stuff and gotten rid of it, I imagine,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: not in a very safe way at all, probably just
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: went in the trash can. And they still found a
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: lot of radiation at the house and the materials there
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: in the shed they had apparently those of vegetable can
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: that had about a thousand times the normal back ground radiation.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: And so they called in federal authorities and they said, well,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: your house is this, Well, the potting shed at least
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: is a superpun site.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They ended up spending sixty grand on a two
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: to three day operation between June twenty sixth and twenty
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: eighth of nineteen ninety five disassembling the potting shed, I think,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: getting some of the earth around it out of there,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: putting them in sealed barrels with you know, radioactive hazard
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: symbols on it, and they sent it to the Great
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Salt Lake Desert where they were buried with other canisters
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: of low level radioactive waste. His mom's potting shed is
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: in a Great Salt Lake desert buried with other radioactive material.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: That's kind of neat. The real stuff though, like you said,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: it ended up in like the landfill nearby. There was
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: a quote from David that I saw where he said
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: the authorities got the garbage, and the garbage got the
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: good stuff, in reference to what his mom and thrown away. So, yeah,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: there's some lumps of amrisium and radium sitting somewhere in
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: the garbage pile outside of Clinton Commerce.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Township and what's in like a thousand years, it'll be safe.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Probably something like that.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I was just I don't know how long that would be.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I bet somebody knows.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: So oh though right now.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: So David falls into depression after this. His high school
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: classmates were not kind to him. Of course, they called
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: him radioactive boy. The EPA said, Hi, we should you know,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: we can examine you in your body to see if
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: you're okay. He said, no, no, no, I don't want
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: anything to do with that. I'll be fine. He did
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: get that Eagle Scout badge. I think the Scout leaders
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: are like, should we really do this? But they did.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: They give him that Eagle Scout badge. And no, apparently
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: that the neighborhoods, all those huge side yards came in
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: handy because no one in the neighborhood, and no one
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: at the home or in his family apparently ever, suffered
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: from any kind of radiation sickness.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: That is so lucky. Yeah, like that is really lucky
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: for him and for everybody, but he no one got hurt.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: That's just mind boggling. At this point, he went on
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: and joined the Navy a couple of years later, and
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: he served for several years. Was honorably discharged and ironically
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: served on the USS Enterprise, which is a nuclear submarine,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: but he didn't work in any capacity near the nuclear
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: part of the submarine.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: He I think he fully served his time in the Navy.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: He did. Yeah, he was honorably discharged.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: No, no, No, I think I think he was discharged from
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: the Marines. I think he like he fully served his
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: time in the Navy. Oh, I thought they thought he
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: was never discharged.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: I thought they discharged you when your time was up too.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: No, you just you're just done. You just like a
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: discharge means it's time for you to go. And they're like, wait,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: I got three more years, and they're like, no, it's
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: time for you.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: To get gotcha, Okay, I gotcha all right. So yes,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: in between the Navy and the Marines, he went to
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: college and started working on an associate's degree. Like you said,
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: he joined the Marines. He was honorably discharged, and his
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: life was just not going the way he wanted it to.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Two thousand and seven found him unemployed. His mental illness
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: had really kind of kicked in, and toward the end
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: of his life spoiler alert, he died at age thirty
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: nine there was an FBI report on him where somebody
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: had been informing on him that he was not using
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: his meds, that he was heavily using cocaine, and that
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: he was acting really paranoid. From what I can tell
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: based on the FBI documents, it seems like the person
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: informing on him seems concerned, not like they're doing it
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: out of any kind of vengeful reason.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: But when FBI showed up and interviewed him again, this
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: is when he's in his thirties, he passed all the
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: inspection or queries that they gave him, questioning that they
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: gave him.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there were you know, there were other complaints
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: and reports with the police that you know, he was
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: trying to do this again, that he had a small
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: reactor at his house. Another landlord I think, said that
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: he had stolen some smoke detectors that they were missing,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: and they found them, like you know, torn apart, basically
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: near David's garage. But they never they never found any
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: kind of radiation. He said he hadn't done that kind
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: of stuff in a decade, and you know, they went
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and checked like where he was living, and they never
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: found any evidence that he had at least started up
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: any more radioactive work.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Imagine during your FBI questioning, you're like, I haven't
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: done any nuclear reactions at home for like ten years. Man,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: that's like that is a different chet. It's like a
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: lifetime and age stuff. Yeah, exactly. The FBI documents also
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: give just kind of a sad note. In twenty ten,
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: which is where the FBI's investigation of him as an
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: adult left off based on those complaints, they noted that
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: he was in rehab after being charged with a bunch
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: of drug charges. So apparently the cocaine use thing was true.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: That was twenty ten, six years later, like I said,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: he was dead at age thirty nine.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So in the media, of course, initially there were
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: some people that said that the radioactivity did him in
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: or that was a factor at least very sadly, the
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: report came back that wasn't true. But he died from
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: combined effects of alcohol and fentanyl and ben a drill,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: and he suffered from mental illness just like his mom,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I think, from paranoid schizophrenia and depression. And it's just
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: a very sad to a story of the kid. He
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: sounds like he was really smart and just wanted to
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: try and do something really amazing, you know.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was found dead in the bathroom at the
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Walmart that he had gone shopping in the night he died.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: And it is a sad end. I don't quite know
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: what to make of it, Chuck.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Like jam it's if he was still alive.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it would be a much
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: different story somehow.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but he did something.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe it's the story of somebody who
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: was just so single minded they did something that most
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: other people would have given up on or never even attempted.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: And that's worth mentioning, you.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, absolutely, And I tried to look at other angles.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I just I never saw anything like nefarious. Really no.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: No, either an FBI interview or a media interview, the
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: interviewer was like, I mean, were you thinking of making
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: a bomb or whatever? And they said they reported like
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: he seemed to just be like that never even crossed
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: my mind, Like, no, it's not at all what I
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: was doing. He was just obsessed with creating a nuclear
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: reaction and.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: He did it. Yeah. Well, thankfully we don't have to
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: end it on that sad note, because Livia found this
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: other great story of a kid named Taylor Wilson who
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: got the radio Active Boy Scout book from his grandmother
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: as an eleven year old science kid and operating under
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: supervision and oversight and getting real experts to help, actually
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: became the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion at the
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: age of fourteen.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is amazing. I mean, fusion is a whole
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: new ballgame.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: But yeah, fourteen and works as a nuclear physicist as
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: an adult.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and supposedly, according to The Guardian, a super cool
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: dude too.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and directly inspired from David's story.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently his grandmother lived to regret it again
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: according to The Guardian. Oh really Yeah, that's what the
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Guardian said, because I guess his grandmother was giving it
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: to him as a cautionary tale and he was like, oh,
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: I want to try this miss out.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Very interesting.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Taylor Wilson's grandmother is the eleventh person we need to
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: thank in this episode, Taylor Wilson being ten and Donald
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Irb being number nine.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Right, nice work.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: If you want to know more about the Nuclear or
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Radioactive Boy Scout, David Han, there's a lot of stuff
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: out there, but you would be remiss in not reading
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: Ken Silverstein's article at least, if not his book on
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: David Hant. And while you're looking that up, we'll just
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: go ahead and do listener mail.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: All right, this is from Tiffany. Hey, guys, thank you
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: for bringing back some vivid memories from my eighth grade
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: reading class too many decades ago to admit. But my
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: reading teacher was also the social studies teacher, and I
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: guess that explains where all of our reading lists included
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Animal Farm, Hiroshima, all applied on the Western Front and
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: you know it The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to Ham
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: home what we read. He would incorporate details of the
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: book into a little imaginary coin toss he did each
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: day to determine whether the boys or girls got to
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: go first and walk to lunch in single file line.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: For the weeks we discussed the Jungle. It would sound
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: something like this. Today's menu includes hot dogs. Call it
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: in the air. Is it the rusty nail or the
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: severed finger? What a great teacher. One day we noticed
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: that half the kids in the class had an edition
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: of the book that included this, and yes, I still
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: remember it. Decades later. Mary had a little lamb and
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: when she saw it sicken. She sent it off to
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: the packing town and now it's labeled chicken. I was
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: really hoping you guys had seen this so we could
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: hear a recitation during the podcast, but we just did
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: it right there, Tiffany.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, I didn't run across that.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't neither. That's a great ad.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, Tiffany. That's a great email and
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: we appreciate it big time. And hats off to your teacher.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: The thirteenth person we need to thank in this episode.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: You're number twelve, Tiffany, Can we think, Jerry? Sure? Why not?
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: We'll go with fourteen. We could thank ourselves and just
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: bring it up to sixteen, a nice.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Even number, sweet sixteen.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: We're gonna make it seventeen because we want to thank
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: you for listening, and we want to thank you in
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: advance for getting in touch with this via email. It's
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff You Should Know
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.