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SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: All right, Chuck here winding it down with number 11.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We wanted to finish on an odd number because odd
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: things are weird. And this is the SYSK Gets Weird playlist.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout. What a great episode.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoy it. I enjoyed it listening
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to it in QA the other day all over again.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: So listen to it right now. The Story of the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Nuclear Boy Scout. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: and Jerry's here, too. And this is a good old-fashioned
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: barn burner of a Stuff You Should Know type topic. Woo!
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Whiz-bang!
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Chuck, somebody sent this in as a suggestion recently, I think, right?
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think you and I had both
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: been aware of this story, but we did get a
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: recent suggestion from David Parcher.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, David Parcher. I think just a couple of weeks
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: ago sent in this suggestion, and look at the timing.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, thank you, David. And we're going to talk
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: about another David. That is David Hahn, the nuclear Boy Scout. Yep.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And this is one of those where we owe a
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: huge debt to a single human because this story may
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: have just gone– Fairly unnoticed as a pretty localized local
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: newspaper item.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: If it hadn't have been found by a gentleman named
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Ken Silverstein, who ended up writing a very large piece
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: in Harper's Magazine and then a book called The Radioactive
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Boy Scout, colon, the true story of a boy in
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: his backyard nuclear reactor. So big thanks to Ken. A
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: lot of this came from your work.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and shout out also to the journalists from the
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Natural Resources News Service, which is this investigative journalist group
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: that just does a public good, like investigate stories and
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: then turn around and give them to news outlets. And
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: apparently that's how Ken came across the story and began
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: researching it. So there's two people that were responsible for it,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: at least.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and three, because we have to count David Hahn. Yeah.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the Michigan teenager who in the 90s managed to create
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: a nuclear reaction in the potting shed of his mom's house.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: It is a story that is interesting and amazing, but
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: also very sad in its ending.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and technically we should thank five people because it
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: took Patty and Ken Hahn to reproduce and create David Hahn.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: So we're at five people now that we need to thank.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: So David was born October 1976. That's the year you
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: were born, right?
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was just a couple months older than him.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And look what this guy did.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: What have you ever done?
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks for that.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: You got to hit podcast. You're not sweating it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sweating.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: When he was a little, and we say this because
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it very much figures into the end of David's story.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: It's very sad. But his mother, Patty, was diagnosed with
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: depression and paranoid schizophrenia, was hospitalized through his early childhood
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: off and on, and she would eventually take her own
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: life in 1996.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that will play into the story later on.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: But Patty remains a character throughout most of it. So
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: too does David's father, Ken, who we mentioned. He's person five,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: we need to thank. Patty and Ken got divorced, I think,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: when David was really little, like maybe a toddler. And
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Ken ended up marrying a coworker, Person number six we
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: need to thank, Kathy Missig. Ken and Kathy were both
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: engineers at General Motors. This whole thing took place in
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: the suburbs of Detroit, specifically Clinton Township, Michigan, specifically later
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: on in a subdivision called Gulf Manor, as we'll see.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: So David lives with Ken and Kathy, and then on
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: weekends he goes and stays with his mom, Patty, and
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: her boyfriend, person number seven who we need to thank,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Michael Palasek. And they're the ones I believe who lived
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: in Golf Manor. And under by all accounts, like David
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: lived a pretty normal childhood, just doing normal childhood things.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until he was 10 that his life found
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: its purpose, which is pretty early if you think about
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: it for your life to find its purpose.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, if you live in Golf Manor,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: hold your emails. We know you're in Commerce Township. Yes.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Thank you for that. I think his dad lived in
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Clinton Township. Yeah.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: It's probably like where I lived in New Jersey. It's
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: like all these old townships just run together. Yeah.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: That's what it looked like on the map.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the person we really need to thank.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: This is number eight, person eight.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Is like you mentioned, when Dave was 10 years old,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: his step mom's father. So I guess his step grandfather,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: if you count that as a thing. He was also
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: an engineer at GM. He gave little David a book
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. And little David
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: was fascinated with science and chemistry, but in particular with
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the stories of Mary and Pierre Curie and their radium discovery.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: And the glow, I think the glow of that whole
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: thing really enthralled this young guy.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this book was heavily illustrated and like the instructions
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: kind of looked, had the same look as like those
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Ripley's Believe It or Not comic strips almost. Totally something
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: that would appeal to a kid that age or a
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: little older. You can find it online in its entirety
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: as a PDF. And I looked at the illustration and
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: don't really know what he saw. And it's actually black
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: and white. that glows to some lines coming off of
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: a beaker or whatever.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Imagination, my friend.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: For some reason, it enthralled him so much so that
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: within two years of receiving that book, he was devouring
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: his father's chemistry textbooks at age 12.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So he was, I mean, these were books that
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: were more advanced than his age. Clearly a smart guy.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: At the age of 14, he apparently made nitroglycerin by himself,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: which evidently isn't the hardest thing to do, but is
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: very dangerous to do. There are other stories like he
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: brought wanted to make his own fireworks at Boy Scout camp.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: So he brought some powdered magnesium, ended up catching on
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: fire and ruined a tent. So what else? He tried
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: to develop a self tanning method that didn't work out right. Yeah.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: He overdosed on canthoxanthin, which I can't remember which one,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: which episode that came up in. But it's a pigment
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: that turns your skin orange from the inside out. And
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: that's what he did. He was trying to come up
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: with a self-tanning method that didn't use any kind of
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: UV radiation.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No comment.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: But he was that kind of dude. He would just
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: turn up at like a scout meeting or something bright
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: orange and be like, yeah, too much canthoxanthin.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, he's exactly that kid. He's also the kind
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: of kid who essentially– destroys his bedroom because he's doing science.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: The walls were wrecked. The carpet was stained. They had
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: to move the carpet out. Eventually, his dad was like, listen,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: this is getting serious. You're destroying our home. You got
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: to move him to the basement, first of all. And
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: when we're not here, you can't be in here. either.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: They took away equipment. They took away some chemicals. And finally,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: they said, all right, this is out of hand. You
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: can't do this anymore. So he said, all right, I'll
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: do it like every divorced kid says, I'll do it
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: at the other parent's house.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: That's right. And so he did. He ended up setting
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: up a lab in his mom's potting shed in Golf
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Manor in Commerce Township. And this is where the story
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: really starts to kind of take off. Because his dad
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: was getting really worried that his son was basically creating
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: and selling drugs. That's what he was doing with his
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: chemistry experiments. And so he and his stepmom would drop
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: in on the library when he was supposedly there to
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: see if he was there. They really did not trust
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: this fascination with chemistry anymore. Which I mean, I can
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: understand if your kid blows himself up a couple of times,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: you're like, what are you doing exactly here?
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: So I don't know if he knew that David went
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: and set up a lab in his mom's potting shed
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: or not. And just was like, it's fine as long
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: as it's out of my house. I'm not sure. I've
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: never seen that either way. But one thing that he
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: did do to try to be like, OK, I think
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: you're creating drugs. You're probably on them. You may or
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: may not be selling them. None of those seem to
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: be true from what I can tell. You need to
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: become an Eagle Scout. And he pushed his son to
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: become an Eagle Scout.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's exactly what he did, as we will
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: later find out. But when it came time for merit
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: badge selection, he said, I want the one that says
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: atomic energy. And the Scoutmaster said, I think he told
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the writer of the book, no one had ever chosen
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: that before in the history of the troop.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: So it kind of reminds me of the Brian Cox
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: scene in Rushmore with Bill Murray when he says he's
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: one of the worst students we've got. I can just
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: picture Brian Cox saying that, that no one's ever tried
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: for this badge before. But it was a legit badge.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: It's kind of funny that it existed. It's different now,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: as we'll see. But yeah. In 1963, they introduced the
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Atomic Energy Badge. It came with a pamphlet that they
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: created with the nuclear energy industry that turned out to
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: have a lot of really useful information, almost like a
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: starter kit. on how to like source radioactive elements in
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the real world.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And how to get your own reactor going.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the projects you could do was to
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: build your own Geiger counter. Like it was serious stuff.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe so legit that, like I said, the Boy
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Scouts would eventually change that badge. I think probably because
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: of what happened with David in 2005, they replaced it
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: with the nuclear science badge. Yes.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: So, but he's still working on the original, the atomic
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: energy badge from 1963, right?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: So he's just devouring this. He's having the best time.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: He visits a hospital ward to learn about x-rays, which
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: is part of the merit badge certification. And, The thing
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: that really changed things, though, Chuck, is he decided just
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: these things the merit badge was having him do, like
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: one of the things was draw a diagram of a
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: fission reaction. Yeah. Or build a model of a nuclear reactor,
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: but a model, like a cardboard model, basically, or paper mache. Or?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Or I will create my own nuclear reactor in my
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: mom's potting shed. he decided he was so psyched about
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: atomic energy that he wanted to do it himself.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I guess you do the model and
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you're like, hey, that wasn't so hard. Let me see
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: if I can do it for real. And he wanted
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: to build, and this shows that he was a kid.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I don't think this was to cause harm. He wanted
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: to build a neutron gun. And the way I, just
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: for my research, this is speculation, but it didn't seem
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: like he was like, I want to build a neutron
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: gun to try and blow up the city that I
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: live in.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: It seemed more like a kid who was really into
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: science and sci-fi and chemistry and wanted to make a
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: little pew-pew gun. Yeah.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I think neutron gun is a misleading term. I can't
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: get the Nintendo duck hunt gun out of my head
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: whenever I hear neutron gun. But really what a neutron
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: gun is, at least the one that David made, it's
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: a block of lead with a cavity carved out and
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: you put radioactive material in the cavity and then cover
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: it over with like aluminum foil. And then you just
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: point the aluminum foil side of that block of lead
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: At what you want to irradiate and then you try
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: to start a chain reaction, a nuclear reaction. That seems
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: to be the sum total of his goals. He wasn't
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: trying to build a bomb. He wasn't trying to sell
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: plutonium to the Libyans. He wasn't doing anything like that.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: He just wanted to see if he could start a
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: nuclear chain reaction, this thing that had fascinated him since
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: he was 10 years old. And so he set about
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: doing that with help from this Eagle Scout merit badge pamphlet. Yeah.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Which makes the whole thing that much more nuts.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and also by adopting a persona as a professor
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: because he starts writing into organizations trying to get information,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: trying to get materials, trying to get schematics. He said
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: he was Professor Han that taught at his high school,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Chippewa Valley High School. Go chipmunks. Are they?
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know. They better be.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: And over the next few years, basically— And apparently, you know,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: he he applied himself. He didn't apply himself in school.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: He was smart, but he was failing academically. almost failing out,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: basically barely passing like the math and English exams needed
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: to graduate eventually. But that is to say these letters
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: had like spelling errors and grammatical errors. It didn't seem
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: like they were written by a professor, but people bought it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: And before you know it, he's like corresponding as a
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: professor to these adults.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And these adults are just totally into this correspondence.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: They're really enjoying helping this, who they think a high
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: school physics teacher learn math, the stuff he's looking for
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: about nuclear energy to ostensibly go and teach to the kids. Right.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: So this correspondence is like genuine. The only thing illegitimate
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: about it was that he was misrepresenting who he actually was.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: A professor rather than a high school student. But other
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: than that, everything else about it seems to be pretty neat.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Except for the fact that it's dangerous and illegal. Yes.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: So one of the people that he corresponded with, I
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: think he corresponded with him the most, was named Donald Erb, E-R-B.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: And he was the guy who was the head of
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: the department that produces isotopes. If you need isotopes, you
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: can go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This is not you,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: but like if you are in some sort of industry
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: that uses isotopes. And this herb will be like, I
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: got you. I got you covered. For some reason, they
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: come in these little baggies with like card suits printed
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: all over them. It's weird. That's a herb kind of touch.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: It's so nice.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: But he worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and nobody
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: helped David Hahn more than Donald Erb did, again, unwittingly.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. So should we take a break?
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: We should.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. All right. I was about to keep going, but
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: let's take a break, and we're going to talk about
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: his pursuit of radioactive materials right after this. Radioactive Materials.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: By the way, Chuck, it's the Chippewa Valley Big Red,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: which appears to be a giant cardinal. Oh. If you
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: ask me, that was a missed opportunity.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Chipmunks?
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Chippewa chipmunks, the rabid chipmunks.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. All right. So when we left off,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: David Hahn was getting serious about building this nuclear reactor.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: He needs material to do that. So and we should
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: point out that, you know, I said it was dangerous.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It was dangerous. He did know this. He still pursued it.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: But he like he had a lead shield. That he
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: worked with. He threw away his contaminated clothes. He left
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: his shoes in there and didn't take them in his house.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: It was like his driving shoes, but in a potting
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: shed that he was building a breeder reactor in.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Do you have driving shoes? Is that a thing?
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: I know that it's a thing from watching old episodes
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: of Frasier.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I've never heard that.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, you've seen driving shoes. People wear them and they're
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: totally unaware that you're not supposed to wear them out
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: of your car. But it's like if your car is
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: so nice... You take off your outdoor shoes and put
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: on your driving shoes that never leave your car. And
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: that way you don't get your car dirty.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I have seen them. I guess
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I just maybe didn't.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: They look kind of like a cross between a loafer
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: and a moccasin. And then the dead giveaway is the
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: tread on the bottom comes up the back of the
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: heel as well because of the position that your foot
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: is in when you're driving. It gives you grip.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: All right. I'm going to have to look this up.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: You've seen them.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: All right. All right. So it's amazing. 52 years old.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Never knew about this.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I was only probably 40 when I learned about it.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: So I don't feel bad.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: All right. So he starts looking for materials. And these
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: are just a few sort of stories about he would
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: go about that. He wanted some americium 241 for this
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: neutron gun. in the booklet that he got from the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Boy Scouts, said you can get this stuff in smoke detectors.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: So he tries to steal them from the Boy Scout camp,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: got caught and sent home early. Then he writes smoke
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: detector companies saying, I need a bunch of these things
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: for a school project. Eventually, one company sold him 100
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: broken ones for 100 bucks. Yeah. Couldn't figure out how
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: to find this americium. So got in touch with another
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: smoke detector company. It was like, oh, well, here's where
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: you find it. And was able to extract americium enough
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: to like weld together with a blowtorch. Yes.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: So remember I was talking about the neutron gun is
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: a lump of lead with a cavity hollowed out. And
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: then you put your radioactive material in the cavity of lead.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Now we have this radioactive material.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Amerisium is– I looked up why it would be in
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: smoke detectors. Did you see why? No. It's really interesting.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Just for a second. So amerisium, because of its radioactive decay,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: it creates a flow of ions, positive and negative ions,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: that are moved across like this metal plate. And there's
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: a constant movement of ions that this amerisium is creating
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: from the air around it. And when smoke interacts with
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: those ions, it actually breaks that flow. That flow is
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: detected by the smoke detector, which triggers it to go off.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Isn't that just so bizarre? That's how your smoke detector works.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: And that's how they still work?
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's still americium in smoke detectors today.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Amazing. Yeah. So you said he built his own Geiger counter.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was this one or if
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: he ended up getting another one, but he would drive
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: around upper Michigan. with this Geiger counter on, just looking
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: for naturally occurring uranium out in the world. And then
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: eventually he's like, this isn't working out. So he got
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a Czechoslovakian firm that the NRC told him about and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: sourced uranium ore.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had that Geiger counter mounted to his dashboard.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: And apparently any time he drove, he had it turned on.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you've got to find this stuff.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: And he actually did find some stuff. It's called pitch blend,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: and it's a source of low-grade uranium. And he tried
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: to extract it, but he couldn't purify it enough. So
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: like you said, he was like, well, I'll just buy
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: some pure uranium from a firm in Czechoslovakia. that he
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: heard about either from the pamphlet or from Donald Erb,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: one of the two.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, another thing he did was the little mantle, like
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the little mesh sacks that you tie onto a gas lantern.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: He bought thousands of those because they have little tiny
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: amounts of thorium-232. And so, you know, he buys thousands
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: of these from surplus stores, buys thousands of dollars in
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: lithium batteries to extract lithium. So he's being very... you know,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I think showing a lot of initiative in at least
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: how to find this stuff.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like, he's using his after-school job money
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: to buy $ 1, 000 in lithium batteries to purify the thorium
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: that he got from the gas lanterns that he purchased
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: and extracted it from. Like, I can't imagine how much
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: time and effort this took. And by the way, he
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: did purify that thorium pretty well. I saw that he
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: got it to 9,000 times the level found in Nature
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: of radioactivity. And about 170 times the level that you
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: would need a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to possess.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: He also went around, of course, where you're going to
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: find old dangerous radioactive things, junkyards and antique shops. So
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: he would take that Geiger counter into a junk shop
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: or an antique store and he would walk around until
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: something lit up like radium paint. If you remember, I
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: think it was pretty excellent podcast on the radium girls.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: And he would find radium paint in an old clock.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he found a vial of paint just tucked
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: away inside of one. Then he really had his radioactive
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: material for his neutron gun. He actually stepped it up
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: and built a second gun. He'd also, from corresponding with
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Donald Erb, gotten even better at creating a neutron gun
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: that was going to be useful in creating a nuclear reaction.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: He also found that when he used the radium on,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: I think, the thorium that he purified, he was trying
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: to trigger a chain reaction by bombarding thorium with neutrons.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: That's what he was trying to do. He found that
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: the thorium wasn't converting into uranium like it was supposed to.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: So he contacted Donald Erb and Donald Erb said, your
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: neutrons are too fast. You got to slow them down.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: One of the best ways to slow them down is tritium.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: And he said, well, where would I find tritium? And
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: apparently they use tritium to make the glowing sites on
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: gun scopes and gun sights. So he ordered, I think,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: dozens of gun sights from mail order catalogs from stores.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: And then he would scrape the tritium off and then
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: send them back and say, I need this sight repaired.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: There's no tritium on it. And they would put more
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: tritium on it and send it back. And he'd just
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: create a new pseudonym and send that back. And that's
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: how methodical that kid was.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So this is all kid stuff. He's like, 14, 15
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: years old. Eventually, he turns 17 and he says, all right,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: I think I want to build an actual nuclear reactor.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: It's called a tiny breeder reactor. They've been around since
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the early 1950s when the U.S. developed them, when we
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: were sort of the beginning of the age of trying
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: to use nuclear power for electricity. Mm-hmm. And they're like, well,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: these little tiny breeder reactors might be a good way
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: to extend the supply of fuel or something. It never
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: quite worked out that way. I think they're still working
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: on that kind of thing in Russia and China. But
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: it never really went off the ground. But it was
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: enough to inspire David to think that maybe I can
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: build a small thing like this in my mom's potting
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: garage or potting shed.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The difference between a breeder reactor and a regular
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: reactor is that in a regular reactor, you just use
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: fuel and you get energy from the fuel. With the
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: breeder reactor, you get energy from the fuel, but it
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: also creates more fuel, and you end up with more
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: fuel than you started with. I saw it likened to
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: leaving your house or the car with a half a
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: tank of gas, and when you return home, the tank
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: is full. That's kind of like what it does, and
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: yet they just could never get it to work. But
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: that's what he was trying to do. And the reason
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: why is because you start with uranium-238, and that's the
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: most abundant uranium found in nature.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: That's right. So he doesn't have enough uranium, no matter
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: what kind it is, to create an actual chain reaction
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: for a normal reactor. So he says, maybe I can
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: at least do something. It seemed like he became sort
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: of obsessed just with this goal of creating some kind
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: of nuclear reaction himself. Yeah, yeah. Got a blueprint from
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: one of his dad's textbooks, took that americium and the
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: radium from his neutron guns, mixed it with some aluminum shavings,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: some beryllium, wrap that up in aluminum foil. And basically,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you have yourself a very small reactor core right there.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he created an atomic pile like the first one
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: that Fermi created in Chicago, but on a much, much
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: smaller scale. But it worked. It worked. Like, it worked.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: He created, like you said, a nuclear reactor, and it
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: started a nuclear chain reaction. And it started to take off, actually,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: pretty quickly.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He's got that Geiger counter, and he's measuring this thing, like,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: on a daily basis. And he's like, it's actually growing. Like,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: it's getting more radioactive in here. I imagine he was
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: thrilled and also possibly a little bit like Matthew Broderick
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: in War Games where it's like, oh, wait a minute. Like,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: what have I done here such that he was worried
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and took it apart?
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: He did. Apparently, he could detect it from five houses
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: down the street. And I looked up pictures of Golf Manor. And,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, their yards are decent size. So five houses
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: away is a pretty good distance to be able to
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: pick up his nuclear reactor in his mom's potting shed
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: with his Geiger counter.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Big side yards there.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, lots of big side yards.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: No zero lot lines.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: No, no, no. Nothing like that. No, this is Golf Manor, man,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: that we're talking about. So he took it apart and
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: he just kind of distributed the different parts to try
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: to drop the radioactivity levels in his mom's potting shed.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: And he kind of went about his life after he
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: disassembled his reactor. He'd achieved his goal, but apparently he
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: had a penchant for stealing wheels and tires off of cars.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: He admitted as much in an interview later on as
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: an adult. And he seems to have gotten caught doing
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: that by the police shortly after he disassembled his reactor.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And when the police called him, they said, we're going
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: to search your car. And he said, go ahead and
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: search my car, but do not open that toolbox. That
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: toolbox is highly radioactive.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Is that a good cliffhanger for a break?
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: I think so. Imagine the cops going, what?
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: You're like, we've got to listen to ads before we
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: know what happens?
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Sorry.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: All right. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: All right, so it's August, almost September, 1994. That reactor
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: is taken apart. I think he put the thorium in
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: a shoebox. The radium in the americium was in the
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: shed still, and the rest is in the trunk of
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: his car. He's just been pulled over, like you said,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: because there was reports that he was stealing tires and wheels.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: And he said, warning, that thing's radioactive. Don't open up
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: that toolbox. So they said, well, maybe we should. This
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: sounds like an IED to me, an improvised explosive device.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Why don't we call in the bomb squad to be safe?
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Called in the bomb squad. They said this whole car
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: basically is radioactive. And all of a sudden, the federal
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: radiological emergency response plan is triggered. And the EPA and
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the FBI and the NRC and the DOE are in
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the state and local authorities are all like. trying to,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: not trying to get this kid, but trying to figure
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: out what in the world is going on with this kid. Yeah.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: He's 17 at the time still. And all of a
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: sudden these huge agencies are like swooping down on him
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: to figure out what's going on. The thing is, I
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: guess they didn't think to ask the right questions or
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: their imaginations just didn't go as far as they could have,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: but they seem to have in this initial questioning, not
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: really have gotten any further than his car. And he
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: didn't offer up any information whatsoever about his actual nuclear
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: reaction experiments in his mom's potting shed. They didn't even
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: know there was a potting shed at his mom's house
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: at this point.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: That's really hard to believe.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, but that's the level of questioning that this kid
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: was subjected to. And I mean, in retrospect, you're like,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: are you guys kidding? You didn't know about the potting
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: shed right off the bat? But if you're an FBI
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: agent or a Department of Energy agent and you're talking
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: to a 17-year-old kid, You're probably not going to assume
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: that because they have this stuff in a toolbox in
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: their car, they actually were successful. successfully creating nuclear chain
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: reactions in their mom's potting shed. I can kind of
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: commiserate with that.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Sure. You probably assume he just got it at radiation
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: or us.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Pretty much.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: So a few months later is when they finally got
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: an expert from the State Department of Public Health to
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: interview David more thoroughly, and that turned up the potting shed.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: David's mom at this point had gathered most of the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: radioactive stuff and gotten rid of it. I imagine not
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: in a very safe way at all. No. Probably just
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: went in the trash can.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: And they still found a lot of radiation at the
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: house in the materials there in the shed. Apparently there
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: was a vegetable can that had about 1,000 times the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: normal background radiation.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: And so they called in federal authorities and they said, well,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: your house is, well, the potting shed at least is
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a super fun site.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They ended up spending 60 grand on a two,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: three day operation between June 26th and 28th of 1995,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: disassembling the potting shed. I think getting some of the
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: earth around it out of there, putting them in sealed
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: barrels with radioactive hazard symbols on it, and they send
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: it to the Great Salt Lake Desert, where they were
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: buried with other canisters of low-level radioactive waste. His mom's
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: potting shed is in the Great Salt Lake Desert, buried
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: with other radioactive material. That's kind of neat. The real stuff, though,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: like you said, it ended up in the landfill nearby.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: There was a quote from David that I saw where
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: he said, The authorities got the garbage and the garbage
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: got the good stuff in reference to what his mom
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: had thrown away. So, yeah, there's some lumps of americium
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: and radium sitting somewhere in the garbage pile outside of
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Clinton Commerce Township.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And what's in like a thousand years, it'll be safe?
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Probably something like that.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I was just I don't know how long that would be.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I bet somebody knows.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, they'll write in.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: So David falls into depression after this. His high school
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: classmates were not kind to him, of course. They called
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: him Radioactive Boy. The EPA said, hi, we should, you know,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: we can examine you and your body to see if
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you're OK. He said, no, no, no, I don't want
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: anything to do with that. I'll be fine. He did
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: get that Eagle Scout badge. I think the scout leaders
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: were like, should we really do this? But they did.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: They gave him that Eagle Scout badge. And no, apparently
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood, all those huge side yards came in handy
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: because no one in the neighborhood and no one at
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the home or in his family apparently ever suffered from
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: any kind of radiation sickness.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: That is so lucky.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Like that is really lucky for him and for everybody.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: But no one got hurt. That's just mind boggling at
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: this point. He went on and joined the Navy a
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: couple of years later and he served for several years,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: was honorably discharged and ironically served on the USS Enterprise,
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: which is a nuclear submarine. But he didn't work in
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: any capacity near the nuclear part of the submarine.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: I think he fully served his time in the Navy.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: He did. Yeah, he was honorably discharged. No, no, no.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: I think I think he was discharged from the Marines.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: I think he like he fully served his time in
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the Navy. Oh, I thought he was never discharged.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: I thought they discharged you when your time was up, too.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: No, you just you're just done. Like a discharge means
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: it's time for you to go. And they're like, wait,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I got three more years. And they're like, no, it's
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: time for you to go.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: OK, I got you. All right. So, yes, in between
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: the Navy and the Marines, he went to college. and
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: started working on an associate's degree. Like you said, he
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: joined the Marines. He was honorably discharged. And his life
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: was just not going the way he wanted it to.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: 2007 found him unemployed. His mental illness had really kind
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: of kicked in. And toward the end of his life,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: spoiler alert, he died at age 39. There was an
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: FBI report on him where somebody had been informing on
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: him that he was not using his meds, that he
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: was heavily using cocaine, and that he was acting really paranoid.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: From what I can tell, based on the FBI documents,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: it seems like the person informing on him seems concerned,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: not like they're doing it out of any kind of
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: vengeful reason.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: But when the FBI showed up and interviewed him, again,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: this is when he's in his 30s, he passed all
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the inspection or queries that they gave him, questioning that
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: they gave him.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And there were, you know, there were other complaints
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: and reports with the police that, you know, he was
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: trying to do this again, that he had a small
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: reactor at his house. Another landlord, I think, said that
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: he had stolen some smoke detectors that they were missing
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: and they found them like, you know, torn apart, basically
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: near David's garage. But they never they never found any
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: kind of radiation. He said he hadn't done that kind
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: of stuff in a decade. And, you know, they went
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and checked like where he was living and they never
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: found any evidence that he had at least started up
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: any more radioactive work. Yeah.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Imagine during your FBI questioning. You're like, I haven't done
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: any nuclear reactions at home for like 10 years, man.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: That's like that is a different chat. It's like a
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: whole lifetime.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Teenage stuff.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The FBI documents also give just kind of
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: a sad note in 2010, which is where the FBI's
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: investigation of him as an adult left off. Based on
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: those complaints, they noted that he was in rehab after
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: being charged with a bunch of drug charges. So apparently
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: the cocaine use thing was true. That was 2010. Six
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: years later, like I said, he was dead at age 39. Yeah.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: So in the media, of course, initially there were some
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: people that said that the radioactivity did him in, or
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: that was a factor at least. Very sadly, the report
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: came back that wasn't true, but he died from combined
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: effects of alcohol and fentanyl and Benadryl. And he suffered
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: from mental illness, just like his mom, I think, from
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: paranoid schizophrenia and depression. And it's just a very sad
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: end to a story of a kid who sounds like
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: he was really smart and just wanted to try and
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: do something really amazing, you know?
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He was found dead in the bathroom at a
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Walmart that he had gone shopping in the night he died.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: And it is a sad end. I don't quite know
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: what to make of it, Chuck.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Like, Same.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: It's if he was still alive. I don't know. I
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: think it would be a much different story somehow.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: But he did something. I don't know. Maybe it's the
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: story of somebody who was just so single minded. They
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: did something that most other people would have given up
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: on or never even attempted. And that's worth mentioning, you know.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And I try to look at other angles, too.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: I just I never saw anything like nefarious, really.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: No, no. Either an FBI interview or a media interview.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: The interviewer was like, I mean, were you thinking of
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: making a bomb or whatever? And they said they reported
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: like he seemed to just be like that never even
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: crossed my mind. Like, no, that's not at all what
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: I was doing. He was just obsessed with creating a
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: nuclear reaction. And he did it.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, thankfully, we don't have to end it on
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: that sad note because Livia found this other great story
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: of a kid named Taylor Wilson who got the Radioactive
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Boy Scout book from his grandmother as an 11-year-old science
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: kid and operating under supervision and oversight and getting real
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: experts to help. actually became the youngest person to achieve
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: nuclear fusion at the age of 14.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is amazing. I mean, fusion's a whole new ballgame.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: But yeah, 14.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: And works as a nuclear physicist as an adult.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and is supposedly, according to The Guardian, a super
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: cool dude, too.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and directly inspired from David's story.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently his grandmother lived to regret it, again,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: according to The Guardian.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what The Guardian said. Because I guess his
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: grandmother was giving it to him as a cautionary tale,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: and he was like, ooh, I want to try this myself.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Very interesting.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Taylor Wilson's grandmother is the 11th person we need to
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: thank in this episode, Taylor Wilson being 10 and Donald
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: Erb being number 9. Right.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Nice work.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: If you want to know more about the nuclear or
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: radioactive Boy Scout David Hahn, there's a lot of stuff
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: out there, but you would be remiss in not reading
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Ken Silverstein's article, at least if not his book, on
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: David Hunt. And while you're looking that up, we'll just
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: go ahead and do listener mail.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Alright, this is from Tiffany. Hey guys, thank you for
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: bringing back some vivid memories from my 8th grade reading class.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Too many decades ago to admit, but my reading teacher
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: was also the social studies teacher, and I guess that
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: explains why all of our reading lists included Animal Farm, Hiroshima,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: All Quiet on the Western Front, and you know it,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. To hammer home what we read,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: he would incorporate details of the book into a little
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: imaginary coin toss he did each day to determine whether
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the boys or girls got to go first and walk
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: to lunch in single file line. For the weeks we
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: discussed The Jungle, it would sound something like this. Today's
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: menu includes hot dogs. Call it in the air. Is
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: it the rusty nail or the severed finger?
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: What a great teacher. One day we noticed that half
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: the kids in the class had an edition of the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: book that included this. And yes, I still remember it
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: decades later. Mary had a little lamb. And when she
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: saw it sicken, she sent it off to the packing town.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: And now it's labeled chicken. I was really hoping you
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: guys had seen this so we could hear a recitation
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: during the podcast. But we just did it right there, Tiffany.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, I didn't run across that.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: I didn't either. That's a great ad.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, Tiffany. That's a great email, and
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: we appreciate it big time. And hats off to your teacher,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: the 13th person we need to thank in this episode.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: You're number 12, Tiffany.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Can we thank Jerry?
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Sure, why not? We'll go with 14. We could thank
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: ourselves and just bring it up to 16, a nice
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: even number.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Sweet 16.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: We're going to make it 17, because we want to
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: thank you for listening, and we want to thank you
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: in advance for getting in touch with us via email
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: at stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.