February 16, 2021 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Uh my name is Ben.
I am not currently an astronaut. Just gotta get that
out there in the front. What about the rest of
us in the astronauts. I mean, I've always had astronautical aspirations.
I'm an aspirational astronaut. I like that. Uh my name
(00:50):
is Noel as well, by the way, I like that.
No years ago, folks, just a quick peet behind the curtain, Uh, Nolan,
I and one of our colleagues were talking about space
Camp and no you you always wanted to go to
space Camp? Right? Oh? I mean, I guess if you're
gonna bring up this sore, sad memory, you know, I
(01:12):
think we all, everybody of our generation probably grew up watching, like,
you know, shows like Double There and nick Arcade, you know,
or some quiz show on Nickelodeon where the ultimate prize
was a trip to space Camp. That's right, You're you're
so right. I forgot about that. Super producer Casey Pegram,
I don't know whether we've talked about this on air.
(01:34):
Were you were you a space camp kid. Did you
want to go? Did you go? I did, in fact
go to space camp in uh in Alabama, and um,
it was okay, I don't I don't think you missed
that much. No yet, but you know, I mean it
was fun. But it lasted for like a week. Um, yeah,
I don't. I don't have any like lasting, like amazing
(01:55):
memories from it, to be honest. Well, then I guess
you didn't work hard enough to get to the zero
G chamber. Casey, maybe I don't know if they had
that when I was there today? Was that was that
a thing that they would hype up on? Yes? It was,
and I clearly do not think it was an actual
thing unless you can speak otherwise, ben Uh, they you know,
zero G chamber would be super expensive. It would be
(02:16):
like it would literally be uh cheaper to just have
one of those inside wind tunnels, you know what I
mean for indoor skydiving. But if I'm not mistaken, weren't
the kids in the space Camp commercials like literally floating
around and stuff. I believe you are correct. I think
that's true. I remember, I mean, I know they had like,
you know, the old classic gyroscope that's a you know,
(02:39):
good old go to training thing. I guess for being
in a semi waitless state. I did, though, to be fair,
work at a science center for a time and I
could ride the gyroscope is as much as I wanted.
So nice, nice, It's different at the top, I hear. So,
why are we talking about space Camp? Why we're talking
(03:00):
about astronauts. Well, we know that space Camp was a
very successful endeavor to raise awareness amongst children about the
possibility of exploring space, of of reaching beyond the bounds
of Earth. Turns out, the idea of exploring space is,
(03:23):
of course, very very old. Today's episode, which may be
the first of a two parter, is about a guy
who may not have heard of, who tried to launch
his own space program way back in the seventeenth century.
His name John Wilkins. John Wilkins, a name that may
have been largely lost to history, especially, you know, given
(03:45):
the reputation of folks like Galileo and copernicust names that
will live on. However, John Wilkins not as much of
a household dame as those folks. Albert Einstein, you know
the guy. You know, that guy, John Wilkins not so much,
but let's give let's give you guys an introduction to
this uh forgotten hero of science. Um. He was a theologian.
(04:06):
He considered himself a natural philosopher. He was born in
sixteen fourteen UM and he actually married Oliver Cromwell's youngest sister, Robina,
which seems like a lot of pressure. Cromwell was not
particularly friendly fellow, if I'm not mistaken. Kind of an
intense dude, from from what we understand, kind of an
(04:26):
intense dude. Uh, you're you're right. Though he was he
was high up. He was a learned intellectual for the time.
He was connected to society, as many learned intellectuals were
in this era. Was born in sixteen fourteen. Uh. He
was a polymath, and he would go on to become
(04:48):
one of the founders of the Royal Society. He also
was a writer, and in some of his books he
explored the possibility of carrying human beings to the Moon.
Like a lot of people in the world at this time,
he believed that the Moon and the other planets in
(05:08):
the Solar System were inhabited, and he was like, we
should meet these people, Why hang out with them? Oh? Totally,
And he had a really optimistic view of how this
might work logistically. Uh. He envisioned a world where you
could literally sail to the Moon using what he would
call something I'm gonna call it this, but something along
the lines of space chariots. He would prefer to orm
(05:30):
as a flying chariot. But his notion of of of
how this might work was that if you could just
get twenty miles above the Earth surface, uh, then you
would enter a zone where you could fly freely or
sail using the space chariot through space. Breathing wouldn't be
a problem, no worries. The astronauts would soon grow accustomed
(05:53):
to this pure, literally rarefied air, the likes of which
was breathed by angels, which I also I gotta I
gotta say I love throughout history the kind of crossover
between the idea of angels and extraterrestrials. Sure, yeah, I
think we've I've mentioned this on on other shows in
(06:15):
the past. But there's from a folklore perspective, there's this
incredible tradition of phrasing the same sort of story through
different cultural perspectives, Right, Like if you look at alien
abduction stories in the I don't know um in the
twentieth century on. They have a ton in common with
(06:38):
the older stories of people like encountering change Lands or
the Fay or you know, Rip van Winkle is pretty
much a UFO story. It's just phrased in the language
of the time. And it also has a weird emphasis
on bowling. I think instead of getting probed by aliens,
he goes bowling with these magic people who wakes up
(07:01):
seven years later. That's exactly right. And and he you know,
this all wasn't only within the conceptual realm. He did
actually attempt to build flying machines with Robert Hook, a
fellow enthusiast. Uh. And they would do this in the
gardens of Wadham College and Oxford in the sixteen fifties.
But you know, as time progressed, he began to understand
(07:22):
a little bit more of how this stuff worked. That
it was, you know, the idea of a vacuum existing
in space. Uh, kind of throw a wrench in the works,
at least in terms of the like magical proposition of
just gliding and sort of tippy toeing around space and
breathing in that angel air. Um. But he did this
didn't stop him right. No, yeah, you're right, and not
(07:43):
at all. I just I love the picture of this
guy and he was Again, we kind of emphasize this enough.
He was a very intelligent person. He was one of
the few people who in that time who attended both
Cambridge and Oxford. Like. He wasn't a blockhead, is what
we're saying. Uh. He did continue in his explorations. I
love the moment though, where he says, huh, maybe going
(08:07):
to the moon is a little more complicated than I thought. Uh.
He also he also had his ups and downs, and
he had his ups and downs in earth life. His
connections to Cromwell eventually reduced him to poverty when the
when the monarchy returned, but he eventually weathered the storm
(08:30):
and would end up as a Bishop of Chester before
his demise. So nowadays, we're gonna look at some weird
stuff in today's show. Nowadays, his ideas might seem really
out there, but we have to understand he was one
of the first people to really consider this in what
(08:53):
at the time was a practical way. I'm really being
careful with that. I don't want to dunk on the guy,
you know what I mean. I don't want to dunk
on him yet. So it's true, we've all been dreaming
about space travel for centuries and centuries and centuries. Uh.
The idea of reaching out to the moon or exploring
that distant surface, uh probably predates written history, and we've
(09:19):
It's weird when you think about it, we've only traveled
to space in the last century. But if you look
back through the historical record, in the second century, a
d True History by Lucian, which is a parody of
travel tales, was already thinking, hey, what if what if
people ended up on the moon? We've been thinking about
(09:40):
it for a long, long, long time. Yeah. For example,
you see it in in pop culture, or at least
the earliest forms of pop culture, like the what is
the case the Voyage to the Moon by I believe
George Meliez that's right, and then of course the Smashing
Pumpkins video that basically tonight Tonight Baby. But I mean
(10:00):
that kind of fantastical imagery is not far off from
the types of sketches that we see Wilkins doing. Like
a lot of this stuff like these, like space chariots,
are the kinds of stuff you would think of in
terms of like almost a Jules Verne approach to space travel.
You know, yeah, absolutely, And we have to remember too,
in Wilkins time, there were there was this fascination with
(10:25):
exploration in general, at least for Europeans. You know, folks
were folks were very much tuned in to the earlier
explorations of Christopher Columbus and Magellan and Francis Drake, their
discoveries of the well, they're quote unquote discoveries of these
new distant lands. So it's it's kind of like a
(10:49):
it's like a situation where you say, Wow, their entire
other continents on this planet that we didn't know about.
Why stop there? What's going on in the moon. If
we can get across the Atlantic Ocean, surely we can
get twenty miles into the air and then sail away
to the moon. Uh, this is this would prove to
(11:11):
be incorrect. Certainly would be incorrect. And again, you know,
we we kind of indicated that once he got the
drift of the idea of a vacuum, that they sort
of had to you know, recalculate a bit. But um,
let's let's take it back. So the scientific advances of
the Jacobean era. Um, it was an important time where
(11:33):
you know, you did see a lot of improvement beyond
of actual practical execution of science. You did have folks
like Galileo making these incredible discoveries in astronomy using only
relatively recently invented telescope technology that came in sixteen ten. Uh.
He was able to actually pinpoint and observe these celestial
(11:54):
bodies and much more detail uh than anyone had been
able to do up to that point. And then you
have the Royal physician Dr William Harvey, who found ways
of exploring the human body and the human circulatory system
and described how the circulation of blood around the bodies
of living creatures actually worked. Now it's in six so
(12:15):
there was there was a lot of innovation happening, things
like mechanical clocks and gunpowder and magnetic compasses and telescopes.
A lot of these things clearly were focused on this,
you know, absolute obsession with exploration. This is a great
(12:37):
time for gadgets. This is like an era of amazing
cool technology. We're talking mechanical clocks. So say goodbye to
that candle with the nails stuck in it, which I
still think was a very mcgever like cool invention. Uh.
Say hello to telescope, Say hello to gunpowder, which will
(12:58):
go on to ruin the world. Uh. And magnetic compass,
which is immensely useful. All of this, all of this
stuff is happening and people are feeling energized by it.
There we can now say to ourselves the world is
both understandable and worth understanding. We can use a critical
(13:20):
thinking approach to answer questions, maybe more importantly, to find
out which questions to ask, and then we can maybe
bring about a new age for humanity overall. I mean,
like I think about that all the time, you know,
like history sometimes appears for the people living in it
(13:41):
to be a time of stasis, right a time of
of constant institutions, a time of constant existing inventions and
social morays. But we have to remember it's eternally changing,
and we're all very privileged, I would say, right now overall,
to live in a time where there are already so
(14:04):
many scientific breakthroughs. There are people as we record the
podcast today, there are people right now who are doing
stuff that was once relegated to the realm of science fiction.
And this era in which Wilkins exists is very similar
they're discovering. Like it wasn't too long ago that someone said, hey,
we found a continent and people are like, oh, that's crazy,
(14:28):
really what you do. And they're like, well, you know
how maps are. We just sort of went left for
a while, and we think if you go right far enough,
you might end up in the same place. That is
so cool, so end rant about how how cool it
is to be human and to discover things. Uh, back
to what you said about Galileo. So, like you said,
(14:50):
Noel in January, he first looked at the Moon through
the telescope right, which was a very new piece of technology, cheat,
and he was dumbfounded. He was like, this looks like
a world of some sort. And the reason you realize
that is because you know, most of the time if
(15:11):
you look at the moon with the unaided or naked eye. Sorry,
off my goes think of that naked eye, I saw
good naked Yeah. Okay, wait, so let's keep that part
in it that it was great. So so he he
looks at the moon, and if you look at the
moon without the aid of a telescope, unless you have
(15:34):
superhuman vision, you're gonna see, like, um, something that could
be arguably described as a face, you're going to see
a circle or a crescent. But what happens if you
look at it through a telescope? Well, first of all,
work to the wise. Don't look at the moon too
long because it will literally burn your eyes out of
your sockets. Okay, in case you didn't know, I'm obviously kidding.
(15:56):
But no, you look through the moon with the telescope
and you start to see craters, You start to see
like real surface features. I mean, how cool is that
that somebody just using lenses and like tubes and metal
and uh, you know, craftsmanship gears, you know, was able
to build a thing that would let you see that
far out into space and in meaningful ways. Like literally
(16:18):
was like, okay, what the hell are these things? They're
clearly not just magical celestial space discs, Like there's whole
geographical features and and perhaps they could even sustain life.
Obviously they didn't have the tech to go much further
than that, but it was powerful enough technology to raise
some very important questions that would further the scientific exploration
(16:40):
of these things. Yeah, well said, now, did Galileo get
everything right automatically? Nobody ever does? Yeah, Yeah, I hate
to see him early on. I mean, like you gotta
you gotta break a few eggs, you know, and then
you gotta appreciate the ability to kind of like learn
what you don't know. And but but again, some of
(17:01):
these folks would die on many hills. But I will
say this about Wilkins. He was able to admit when
he learned something that he was wrong about and pivoted. Yeah,
that's true. That's a really good point, and it's something
that is humbling for the individual, but tremendously important for
society overall. I would argue, So here's what Galileo kind
(17:26):
of got wrong in the beginning, Well, definitely got wrong.
He saw he saw some of these features on the Moon,
and he went, holy smokes, those are oceans, those are seeds,
just like we have here on Earth. He even publishes
some sketches of this in Starry Messenger. And then other people,
of course, are touting astronomy, working in astronomy throughout throughout Europe,
(17:53):
and there are various discoveries of people like Galileo and
Ben Johnson sparked an intellectual flame amidst other like minded intellectuals.
And again, as we said earlier, we have to remember
that science and religion were still kind of commingling, and
sometimes they came came to blows. So it was a
(18:15):
natural thing. Then, whether you are an Anglican clergyman like
John Wilkins, or whether you are just a just a
regular Joe, it's natural to ask yourself if God made
the moon, right, because God makes all things in this
belief system, If God made the moon and made it
a world, doesn't it naturally follow that God put intelligent life.
(18:37):
They're just the same way that God put arguably intelligent
life on Earth. That's still up for debate. I would say,
And if those are, if those things exist, those beings exist,
can we speak with them? The idea of the Jacobean
Space Program was focus on the concept of speaking to aliens.
(19:03):
And this is where we find John Wilkins. He's twenty
four years old. He is, in the parlance of our time,
crushing it. He graduated Oxford University. He published a book
in sixty eight called The Discovery of a New World.
On the mean m O O N E. Is that
(19:23):
like an old English situation? What is that about? Yes?
But if I had I like, I like thinking that,
He always pronounced it in like a snarky the way
people say, actually a cocktail parties. I always like to
picture him saying the discovery of the new world in
the mean mean Yeah, yeah, it sounds kind of like
(19:43):
a cartman kind of thing. Yeah it it did, you know,
I guess what Galileo was known. But he this guy
had a lot of pull because he was sort of
a high society guy. Um, he was had bona fides
from Oxford University, and so in his discovery of a
new world in the mean uh, he really made put
(20:05):
Galileo's descriptions of the Moon as a solid uh and
ultimately habitable world in front of a lot of eyeballs. Wilkins, However,
it was a Copernican. Copernicus, you'll remember, believe that the
Earth revolved around the Sun, that heliocentric views, the Sun
being the center of of the universe um and or
(20:28):
of whatever the known area of the universe that was
being examined at the time. UM. And he suggested that
not only might the Moon be something that humans could
eventually attain, you know, in terms of exploration, but also
that other planets might be on the table, uh to
to visit and perhaps even colonized. So I mean that alone,
(20:52):
given how little you know, functional ability to do any
of these things existed pretty forward thinking and definitely still
top of mind for a lot of you know, space arts. Yes, yeah, exactly.
Are you kidding? Uh, We're gonna one day take a
week off and we're just gonna go to space camp.
(21:13):
We will be the oldest kids there, but we will
have a lot of fun. So let's talk about John
a little bit. Let's talk about John. So we said,
he's born in sixteen fourteen. He's a New Year's baby,
born January one, uh in Cannon's Ashby, Northamptonshire. He is
a graduate of Oxford. He's ordained as a priest in
(21:33):
the Church of England and after that he travels across
the United Kingdom. He goes to Germany to meet other scholars,
other people who are researching this stuff, who are thinking
about it. He is nowadays considered one of the founders
or pre eminent voices of something known as natural theology.
(21:56):
Natural theology is super important to everybody living to day
because it was a theological practice that slowly accepted scientific accomplishments.
They did not see the idea of learning and understanding
the natural processes of reality as somehow heretical or anti religion,
(22:20):
you know what I mean. Yeah, seemingly he got a
pass from that. I don't know if it was because
of his stature within you know, society or what. Uh
it's it's it's still fascinating them. Here's the thing, science fiction.
It's been around for a long time, and there was
(22:42):
contemporary science fiction that actually much like what we see today,
even at times inspired some of wilkins ideas for space travel. Um.
He was a ravenous consumer of science fiction, a big
fan of of Johannes Kepler's Somnia or the Dream from
sixteen thirty four, which actually um kind of speculated on
(23:05):
this very thing, this idea of humans being able to
make that ultimate giant leap for mankind into space and um.
When actually preparing much of the uh the manuscript for
his second edition of the Discovery of the Mune, Wilkins
(23:26):
also took inspiration from Francis Godwin's story The Man in
the Mune. It's also spelled I guess that was just
a popular spelling of it at the time, UM, and
that came out in sixteen thirty eight. There's a character
in that piece named Domingo Gonzalez, who is magically transported
to the Moon in wait for it, a chariot that
(23:47):
is towed by a flock of geese. So space Yeah, no,
thank you. Uh no, give me space unicorns any day.
Uh uh yes, space ge sounds terrified? Did they shoot
lasers out of their weird little serrated teeth rimmed mouths?
I don't want to know you home, it's true, or
(24:12):
screamed as the space keys devour your flesh. But yeah,
in the seventeenth century, I mean, this was the height
of really out there thinking science fiction, and Wilkins believed
that it would not only be possible to travel to
the Moon occasionally, but that it would be possible to
(24:32):
potentially habitate it and and colonize it and create the
kinds of biodome scenarios that we're still toying with today. Um.
The Moon was kind of the ultimate achievable space destination,
simply because of its proximity to the Earth and and
the fact that observably it seemed doable. You know, it
(24:55):
didn't seem like you'd be close enough to the Sun
to like burn up in a fire. Um, and seemed
like it was something that could actually be reached, you know,
and a reasonable amount of time. Right, just so, like
how how League of extraordinary Gentlemen is this? Wilkins understood
that Domingo Gonzalez was a fictional character. He understood that
(25:19):
a lot of what was inspiring him was the equivalent
of uh, fanciful science fiction. But he appreciated it nonetheless,
and so he aimed to quote, raise up some spirits
eminent for new attempts and strange inventions, and essentially get
a brain trust together to figure out ways to bring
(25:43):
the moon closer. They called it by traveling through space.
And you can read quotes from his second edition of Discovery.
You can also find some great articles about this. Uh
we'd like to especially shout out Scientific American for their
work it. You get the sense when you're reading Discovery
that he knows how wild this idea is. At one
(26:08):
point in the book, he says, I do seriously, and
upon good grounds, affirm it is possible to make a
flying chariot. It's kind of right, like we have space
shuttles now, I guess that would be the closest analog
to the chariot. From that point in Discovery, he goes
on to describe and sketch out various spaceship predecessors. These
(26:33):
mechanisms or apparatus is for flying. They're driven by manpower
sometimes or they're towed by space. It's like, I think
it needs to be a reverb on that quack if possible. Okay,
hopefully we can achieve Okay, sy give us some yeah,
give us some sci fi music every time we say that.
(26:54):
So yeah. So he also, interestingly enough, thinks about how
an engine could be made that would use the same
natural principles as uh, doves and eagles. But he's specifically
I think inspired by the old legends of mechanical birds. Yeah,
(27:17):
and clearly inspired by a lot of like if you're
talking about chariots, I mean, it sounds to me like
he's trying to harness the power of the gods and
all of this. But despite all of this kind of ludicrous,
outlandish flying chariot imagery and space keys, and again, that
wasn't his thing. That was from a science fiction story
that he just pulled inspiration from. His methods were actually
(27:38):
somewhat grounded in the science, at least of the time. Right,
his flying chariot would technically incorporate technical details that you'd
see in the designs of of ships, utilizing principles of
atmospherics uh and some of the really popular kind of
clockwork automata of the time, and also early experimental physics. Um.
(28:04):
And he would ultimately kind of squash all of these
disparate kind of like elements together in synthesizing a series
of theories and skills that would allow him to propose
something incredible. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm so inspired by this,
you know, and and ridiculous historians, we hope you're inspired
(28:28):
by this too. He is thinking through this logically, He
is thinking through this as practically as he can. You know,
he spends years thinking about how how this would work,
like how we could conceivably do this. One of the
(28:49):
primary tenets of his belief is his understanding of the
gravitational pull of Earth, and he knows that this is
what anybody traveling to space will need to escape from. Right.
That's that's the first that's the first speed bump you
have to get over. We have to remember, however, this
(29:12):
was a good uh five decades before Isaac Newton had
his famous series of epiphanies and revelations. So at this
point where Wilkins life, he's still kind of confusing the
pull of gravity with the attraction of what we mentioned earlier,
Earth's magnetic field. And so with that assumption, he noticed
(29:34):
that a magnet wouldn't attract a compass needle at a
given point of separation. If he took the magnet far
enough away, the compass wouldn't catch it. And that's where
he got his number of twenty miles. He thought, you know,
once you get twenty miles above the surface of the Earth,
you're no longer close enough to the magnet. You're not
(29:56):
subject to It's uh, it's you know why, I guess
exactly exactly. So this is his initial problem to solve.
This is what he tackles. His question is, if I
want to get people to the Moon, what's the first
thing I need to do. The answer to that is
I need to get them twenty miles away from the
(30:18):
surface of the Earth. So let me work on that first.
And this is where this is where he gets into
the brain and storming. First, he starts with, um, let's
see you can you can see pictures of this on
Atlas Obscura. He starts with this open chariot and it
has wheels, and it has like this vertical rotating sail
(30:42):
that comes out of the backrest of the of the seat.
And his idea is that if they could get this
rolling on its wheels and lift a couple of dudes
up into space, then they could glide to a landing
using that sail on the Moon with the same wheels
from the chariot. I want to point out if you
(31:05):
look at his work now, yes, we understand it seems
a little weird, a little bit dr Seussian or whatever,
but um, he was doing his best and he thought
about the engineering right. He had a motor for this.
As you said, Ben, this really was an incredible time
for gadgets with things like you know, gear driven clocks
(31:26):
and all of these various automataw that used spring driven
kind of clockwork motors. Uh. And that is exactly what
he envisioned as the centerpiece for his flying chariot design.
UM gunpowder no less, which is another innovation that was
huge at the time. UM would actually be used to
rapidly wind up the machine so that the mechanism when
(31:50):
you powered it on, would cause this large kind of
explosion of energy that would then create the locomotion to
drive a pair of wings resembling you know, birds on
either side of the chariot. That would then allow the
chariot to theoretically fly upwards UH twenty miles conceivably, which
(32:14):
would then allow it to escape the Earth's pull. The
motor could then be switched off UH and glide towards
the I'm assuming he would have some sort of steering mechanism, right,
and otherwise you would just kind of wander willie nilly
and not have any you know, way of of navigating. Well,
for Wilkins, we have to remember that the idea here
(32:34):
is that the Moon exerts some sort of smaller level
of attraction, So like, once you get far enough away
from Earth, once you get to that twenty mile threshold,
then you will start to be naturally pulled towards the Moon.
Imagine him talking to these astronauts here, if he if
(32:56):
he was pitching this, and you would say, okay, we're
gonna get you out into space twenty miles out and
then I think, based on my opinion and what I
understand of the world, you'll just sort of go toward
the Moon. And I hope that's right exactly fingers crossed,
fingers crossed, this works out to my exacting specifications. Okay, okay, okay.
(33:21):
We set at the top of the show thinking it
might happen, but it's definitely happening. This has become a
two parter, still technically a proactive two parter. We had
the inkling that it was heading in that direction. Ben,
you had the forethought and the presciens to to actually
say it out loud, so we don't have to retroactively
stemp that out. Huge thanks to super producer Casey Bagraham
for putting up with us and our weird whims of
(33:44):
two parttery, but this one did seem like it was
worth it. Huge thanks to Christopher Haciota is here in spirit,
Jonathan Strickling the Quister. Huge, huge thanks to Eaves, Jeff
Co Big big thanks to one of the stars of
our personal constellation, Gabe Luizier, who will be returning on
air at some point soon, so stay tuned. It also
stay tuned for part two of this series, which is
(34:06):
arriving later this week. What a ride, man, No, what
a ride? I really dig this Wilkins guy. Yeah, it
seems like a real mench It's a ride almost more
exciting than when you first rode Space Mountain when you
were a little kid. Can you imagine what that would
be like now, mind Blonde, We'll see you next time, folks.
(34:34):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Uh my name is Ben.
I am not currently an astronaut. Just gotta get that
out there in the front. What about the rest of
us in the astronauts. I mean, I've always had astronautical aspirations.
I'm an aspirational astronaut. I like that. Uh my name
(00:50):
is Noel as well, by the way, I like that.
No years ago, folks, just a quick peet behind the curtain, Uh, Nolan,
I and one of our colleagues were talking about space
Camp and no you you always wanted to go to
space Camp? Right? Oh? I mean, I guess if you're
gonna bring up this sore, sad memory, you know, I
(01:12):
think we all, everybody of our generation probably grew up watching, like,
you know, shows like Double There and nick Arcade, you know,
or some quiz show on Nickelodeon where the ultimate prize
was a trip to space Camp. That's right, You're you're
so right. I forgot about that. Super producer Casey Pegram,
I don't know whether we've talked about this on air.
(01:34):
Were you were you a space camp kid. Did you
want to go? Did you go? I did, in fact
go to space camp in uh in Alabama, and um,
it was okay, I don't I don't think you missed
that much. No yet, but you know, I mean it
was fun. But it lasted for like a week. Um, yeah,
I don't. I don't have any like lasting, like amazing
(01:55):
memories from it, to be honest. Well, then I guess
you didn't work hard enough to get to the zero
G chamber. Casey, maybe I don't know if they had
that when I was there today? Was that was that
a thing that they would hype up on? Yes? It was,
and I clearly do not think it was an actual
thing unless you can speak otherwise, ben Uh, they you know,
zero G chamber would be super expensive. It would be
(02:16):
like it would literally be uh cheaper to just have
one of those inside wind tunnels, you know what I
mean for indoor skydiving. But if I'm not mistaken, weren't
the kids in the space Camp commercials like literally floating
around and stuff. I believe you are correct. I think
that's true. I remember, I mean, I know they had like,
you know, the old classic gyroscope that's a you know,
(02:39):
good old go to training thing. I guess for being
in a semi waitless state. I did, though, to be fair,
work at a science center for a time and I
could ride the gyroscope is as much as I wanted.
So nice, nice, It's different at the top, I hear. So,
why are we talking about space Camp? Why we're talking
(03:00):
about astronauts. Well, we know that space Camp was a
very successful endeavor to raise awareness amongst children about the
possibility of exploring space, of of reaching beyond the bounds
of Earth. Turns out, the idea of exploring space is,
(03:23):
of course, very very old. Today's episode, which may be
the first of a two parter, is about a guy
who may not have heard of, who tried to launch
his own space program way back in the seventeenth century.
His name John Wilkins. John Wilkins, a name that may
have been largely lost to history, especially, you know, given
(03:45):
the reputation of folks like Galileo and copernicust names that
will live on. However, John Wilkins not as much of
a household dame as those folks. Albert Einstein, you know
the guy. You know, that guy, John Wilkins not so much,
but let's give let's give you guys an introduction to
this uh forgotten hero of science. Um. He was a theologian.
(04:06):
He considered himself a natural philosopher. He was born in
sixteen fourteen UM and he actually married Oliver Cromwell's youngest sister, Robina,
which seems like a lot of pressure. Cromwell was not
particularly friendly fellow, if I'm not mistaken. Kind of an
intense dude, from from what we understand, kind of an
(04:26):
intense dude. Uh, you're you're right. Though he was he
was high up. He was a learned intellectual for the time.
He was connected to society, as many learned intellectuals were
in this era. Was born in sixteen fourteen. Uh. He
was a polymath, and he would go on to become
(04:48):
one of the founders of the Royal Society. He also
was a writer, and in some of his books he
explored the possibility of carrying human beings to the Moon.
Like a lot of people in the world at this time,
he believed that the Moon and the other planets in
(05:08):
the Solar System were inhabited, and he was like, we
should meet these people, Why hang out with them? Oh? Totally,
And he had a really optimistic view of how this
might work logistically. Uh. He envisioned a world where you
could literally sail to the Moon using what he would
call something I'm gonna call it this, but something along
the lines of space chariots. He would prefer to orm
(05:30):
as a flying chariot. But his notion of of of
how this might work was that if you could just
get twenty miles above the Earth surface, uh, then you
would enter a zone where you could fly freely or
sail using the space chariot through space. Breathing wouldn't be
a problem, no worries. The astronauts would soon grow accustomed
(05:53):
to this pure, literally rarefied air, the likes of which
was breathed by angels, which I also I gotta I
gotta say I love throughout history the kind of crossover
between the idea of angels and extraterrestrials. Sure, yeah, I
think we've I've mentioned this on on other shows in
(06:15):
the past. But there's from a folklore perspective, there's this
incredible tradition of phrasing the same sort of story through
different cultural perspectives, Right, Like if you look at alien
abduction stories in the I don't know um in the
twentieth century on. They have a ton in common with
(06:38):
the older stories of people like encountering change Lands or
the Fay or you know, Rip van Winkle is pretty
much a UFO story. It's just phrased in the language
of the time. And it also has a weird emphasis
on bowling. I think instead of getting probed by aliens,
he goes bowling with these magic people who wakes up
(07:01):
seven years later. That's exactly right. And and he you know,
this all wasn't only within the conceptual realm. He did
actually attempt to build flying machines with Robert Hook, a
fellow enthusiast. Uh. And they would do this in the
gardens of Wadham College and Oxford in the sixteen fifties.
But you know, as time progressed, he began to understand
(07:22):
a little bit more of how this stuff worked. That
it was, you know, the idea of a vacuum existing
in space. Uh, kind of throw a wrench in the works,
at least in terms of the like magical proposition of
just gliding and sort of tippy toeing around space and
breathing in that angel air. Um. But he did this
didn't stop him right. No, yeah, you're right, and not
(07:43):
at all. I just I love the picture of this
guy and he was Again, we kind of emphasize this enough.
He was a very intelligent person. He was one of
the few people who in that time who attended both
Cambridge and Oxford. Like. He wasn't a blockhead, is what
we're saying. Uh. He did continue in his explorations. I
love the moment though, where he says, huh, maybe going
(08:07):
to the moon is a little more complicated than I thought. Uh.
He also he also had his ups and downs, and
he had his ups and downs in earth life. His
connections to Cromwell eventually reduced him to poverty when the
when the monarchy returned, but he eventually weathered the storm
(08:30):
and would end up as a Bishop of Chester before
his demise. So nowadays, we're gonna look at some weird
stuff in today's show. Nowadays, his ideas might seem really
out there, but we have to understand he was one
of the first people to really consider this in what
(08:53):
at the time was a practical way. I'm really being
careful with that. I don't want to dunk on the guy,
you know what I mean. I don't want to dunk
on him yet. So it's true, we've all been dreaming
about space travel for centuries and centuries and centuries. Uh.
The idea of reaching out to the moon or exploring
that distant surface, uh probably predates written history, and we've
(09:19):
It's weird when you think about it, we've only traveled
to space in the last century. But if you look
back through the historical record, in the second century, a
d True History by Lucian, which is a parody of
travel tales, was already thinking, hey, what if what if
people ended up on the moon? We've been thinking about
(09:40):
it for a long, long, long time. Yeah. For example,
you see it in in pop culture, or at least
the earliest forms of pop culture, like the what is
the case the Voyage to the Moon by I believe
George Meliez that's right, and then of course the Smashing
Pumpkins video that basically tonight Tonight Baby. But I mean
(10:00):
that kind of fantastical imagery is not far off from
the types of sketches that we see Wilkins doing. Like
a lot of this stuff like these, like space chariots,
are the kinds of stuff you would think of in
terms of like almost a Jules Verne approach to space travel.
You know, yeah, absolutely, And we have to remember too,
in Wilkins time, there were there was this fascination with
(10:25):
exploration in general, at least for Europeans. You know, folks
were folks were very much tuned in to the earlier
explorations of Christopher Columbus and Magellan and Francis Drake, their
discoveries of the well, they're quote unquote discoveries of these
new distant lands. So it's it's kind of like a
(10:49):
it's like a situation where you say, Wow, their entire
other continents on this planet that we didn't know about.
Why stop there? What's going on in the moon. If
we can get across the Atlantic Ocean, surely we can
get twenty miles into the air and then sail away
to the moon. Uh, this is this would prove to
(11:11):
be incorrect. Certainly would be incorrect. And again, you know,
we we kind of indicated that once he got the
drift of the idea of a vacuum, that they sort
of had to you know, recalculate a bit. But um,
let's let's take it back. So the scientific advances of
the Jacobean era. Um, it was an important time where
(11:33):
you know, you did see a lot of improvement beyond
of actual practical execution of science. You did have folks
like Galileo making these incredible discoveries in astronomy using only
relatively recently invented telescope technology that came in sixteen ten. Uh.
He was able to actually pinpoint and observe these celestial
(11:54):
bodies and much more detail uh than anyone had been
able to do up to that point. And then you
have the Royal physician Dr William Harvey, who found ways
of exploring the human body and the human circulatory system
and described how the circulation of blood around the bodies
of living creatures actually worked. Now it's in six so
(12:15):
there was there was a lot of innovation happening, things
like mechanical clocks and gunpowder and magnetic compasses and telescopes.
A lot of these things clearly were focused on this,
you know, absolute obsession with exploration. This is a great
(12:37):
time for gadgets. This is like an era of amazing
cool technology. We're talking mechanical clocks. So say goodbye to
that candle with the nails stuck in it, which I
still think was a very mcgever like cool invention. Uh.
Say hello to telescope, Say hello to gunpowder, which will
(12:58):
go on to ruin the world. Uh. And magnetic compass,
which is immensely useful. All of this, all of this
stuff is happening and people are feeling energized by it.
There we can now say to ourselves the world is
both understandable and worth understanding. We can use a critical
(13:20):
thinking approach to answer questions, maybe more importantly, to find
out which questions to ask, and then we can maybe
bring about a new age for humanity overall. I mean,
like I think about that all the time, you know,
like history sometimes appears for the people living in it
(13:41):
to be a time of stasis, right a time of
of constant institutions, a time of constant existing inventions and
social morays. But we have to remember it's eternally changing,
and we're all very privileged, I would say, right now overall,
to live in a time where there are already so
(14:04):
many scientific breakthroughs. There are people as we record the
podcast today, there are people right now who are doing
stuff that was once relegated to the realm of science fiction.
And this era in which Wilkins exists is very similar
they're discovering. Like it wasn't too long ago that someone said, hey,
we found a continent and people are like, oh, that's crazy,
(14:28):
really what you do. And they're like, well, you know
how maps are. We just sort of went left for
a while, and we think if you go right far enough,
you might end up in the same place. That is
so cool, so end rant about how how cool it
is to be human and to discover things. Uh, back
to what you said about Galileo. So, like you said,
(14:50):
Noel in January, he first looked at the Moon through
the telescope right, which was a very new piece of technology, cheat,
and he was dumbfounded. He was like, this looks like
a world of some sort. And the reason you realize
that is because you know, most of the time if
(15:11):
you look at the moon with the unaided or naked eye. Sorry,
off my goes think of that naked eye, I saw
good naked Yeah. Okay, wait, so let's keep that part
in it that it was great. So so he he
looks at the moon, and if you look at the
moon without the aid of a telescope, unless you have
(15:34):
superhuman vision, you're gonna see, like, um, something that could
be arguably described as a face, you're going to see
a circle or a crescent. But what happens if you
look at it through a telescope? Well, first of all,
work to the wise. Don't look at the moon too
long because it will literally burn your eyes out of
your sockets. Okay, in case you didn't know, I'm obviously kidding.
(15:56):
But no, you look through the moon with the telescope
and you start to see craters, You start to see
like real surface features. I mean, how cool is that
that somebody just using lenses and like tubes and metal
and uh, you know, craftsmanship gears, you know, was able
to build a thing that would let you see that
far out into space and in meaningful ways. Like literally
(16:18):
was like, okay, what the hell are these things? They're
clearly not just magical celestial space discs, Like there's whole
geographical features and and perhaps they could even sustain life.
Obviously they didn't have the tech to go much further
than that, but it was powerful enough technology to raise
some very important questions that would further the scientific exploration
(16:40):
of these things. Yeah, well said, now, did Galileo get
everything right automatically? Nobody ever does? Yeah, Yeah, I hate
to see him early on. I mean, like you gotta
you gotta break a few eggs, you know, and then
you gotta appreciate the ability to kind of like learn
what you don't know. And but but again, some of
(17:01):
these folks would die on many hills. But I will
say this about Wilkins. He was able to admit when
he learned something that he was wrong about and pivoted. Yeah,
that's true. That's a really good point, and it's something
that is humbling for the individual, but tremendously important for
society overall. I would argue, So here's what Galileo kind
(17:26):
of got wrong in the beginning, Well, definitely got wrong.
He saw he saw some of these features on the Moon,
and he went, holy smokes, those are oceans, those are seeds,
just like we have here on Earth. He even publishes
some sketches of this in Starry Messenger. And then other people,
of course, are touting astronomy, working in astronomy throughout throughout Europe,
(17:53):
and there are various discoveries of people like Galileo and
Ben Johnson sparked an intellectual flame amidst other like minded intellectuals.
And again, as we said earlier, we have to remember
that science and religion were still kind of commingling, and
sometimes they came came to blows. So it was a
(18:15):
natural thing. Then, whether you are an Anglican clergyman like
John Wilkins, or whether you are just a just a
regular Joe, it's natural to ask yourself if God made
the moon, right, because God makes all things in this
belief system, If God made the moon and made it
a world, doesn't it naturally follow that God put intelligent life.
(18:37):
They're just the same way that God put arguably intelligent
life on Earth. That's still up for debate. I would say,
And if those are, if those things exist, those beings exist,
can we speak with them? The idea of the Jacobean
Space Program was focus on the concept of speaking to aliens.
(19:03):
And this is where we find John Wilkins. He's twenty
four years old. He is, in the parlance of our time,
crushing it. He graduated Oxford University. He published a book
in sixty eight called The Discovery of a New World.
On the mean m O O N E. Is that
(19:23):
like an old English situation? What is that about? Yes?
But if I had I like, I like thinking that,
He always pronounced it in like a snarky the way
people say, actually a cocktail parties. I always like to
picture him saying the discovery of the new world in
the mean mean Yeah, yeah, it sounds kind of like
(19:43):
a cartman kind of thing. Yeah it it did, you know,
I guess what Galileo was known. But he this guy
had a lot of pull because he was sort of
a high society guy. Um, he was had bona fides
from Oxford University, and so in his discovery of a
new world in the mean uh, he really made put
(20:05):
Galileo's descriptions of the Moon as a solid uh and
ultimately habitable world in front of a lot of eyeballs. Wilkins, However,
it was a Copernican. Copernicus, you'll remember, believe that the
Earth revolved around the Sun, that heliocentric views, the Sun
being the center of of the universe um and or
(20:28):
of whatever the known area of the universe that was
being examined at the time. UM. And he suggested that
not only might the Moon be something that humans could
eventually attain, you know, in terms of exploration, but also
that other planets might be on the table, uh to
to visit and perhaps even colonized. So I mean that alone,
(20:52):
given how little you know, functional ability to do any
of these things existed pretty forward thinking and definitely still
top of mind for a lot of you know, space arts. Yes, yeah, exactly.
Are you kidding? Uh, We're gonna one day take a
week off and we're just gonna go to space camp.
(21:13):
We will be the oldest kids there, but we will
have a lot of fun. So let's talk about John
a little bit. Let's talk about John. So we said,
he's born in sixteen fourteen. He's a New Year's baby,
born January one, uh in Cannon's Ashby, Northamptonshire. He is
a graduate of Oxford. He's ordained as a priest in
(21:33):
the Church of England and after that he travels across
the United Kingdom. He goes to Germany to meet other scholars,
other people who are researching this stuff, who are thinking
about it. He is nowadays considered one of the founders
or pre eminent voices of something known as natural theology.
(21:56):
Natural theology is super important to everybody living to day
because it was a theological practice that slowly accepted scientific accomplishments.
They did not see the idea of learning and understanding
the natural processes of reality as somehow heretical or anti religion,
(22:20):
you know what I mean. Yeah, seemingly he got a
pass from that. I don't know if it was because
of his stature within you know, society or what. Uh
it's it's it's still fascinating them. Here's the thing, science fiction.
It's been around for a long time, and there was
(22:42):
contemporary science fiction that actually much like what we see today,
even at times inspired some of wilkins ideas for space travel. Um.
He was a ravenous consumer of science fiction, a big
fan of of Johannes Kepler's Somnia or the Dream from
sixteen thirty four, which actually um kind of speculated on
(23:05):
this very thing, this idea of humans being able to
make that ultimate giant leap for mankind into space and um.
When actually preparing much of the uh the manuscript for
his second edition of the Discovery of the Mune, Wilkins
(23:26):
also took inspiration from Francis Godwin's story The Man in
the Mune. It's also spelled I guess that was just
a popular spelling of it at the time, UM, and
that came out in sixteen thirty eight. There's a character
in that piece named Domingo Gonzalez, who is magically transported
to the Moon in wait for it, a chariot that
(23:47):
is towed by a flock of geese. So space Yeah, no,
thank you. Uh no, give me space unicorns any day.
Uh uh yes, space ge sounds terrified? Did they shoot
lasers out of their weird little serrated teeth rimmed mouths?
I don't want to know you home, it's true, or
(24:12):
screamed as the space keys devour your flesh. But yeah,
in the seventeenth century, I mean, this was the height
of really out there thinking science fiction, and Wilkins believed
that it would not only be possible to travel to
the Moon occasionally, but that it would be possible to
(24:32):
potentially habitate it and and colonize it and create the
kinds of biodome scenarios that we're still toying with today. Um.
The Moon was kind of the ultimate achievable space destination,
simply because of its proximity to the Earth and and
the fact that observably it seemed doable. You know, it
(24:55):
didn't seem like you'd be close enough to the Sun
to like burn up in a fire. Um, and seemed
like it was something that could actually be reached, you know,
and a reasonable amount of time. Right, just so, like
how how League of extraordinary Gentlemen is this? Wilkins understood
that Domingo Gonzalez was a fictional character. He understood that
(25:19):
a lot of what was inspiring him was the equivalent
of uh, fanciful science fiction. But he appreciated it nonetheless,
and so he aimed to quote, raise up some spirits
eminent for new attempts and strange inventions, and essentially get
a brain trust together to figure out ways to bring
(25:43):
the moon closer. They called it by traveling through space.
And you can read quotes from his second edition of Discovery.
You can also find some great articles about this. Uh
we'd like to especially shout out Scientific American for their
work it. You get the sense when you're reading Discovery
that he knows how wild this idea is. At one
(26:08):
point in the book, he says, I do seriously, and
upon good grounds, affirm it is possible to make a
flying chariot. It's kind of right, like we have space
shuttles now, I guess that would be the closest analog
to the chariot. From that point in Discovery, he goes
on to describe and sketch out various spaceship predecessors. These
(26:33):
mechanisms or apparatus is for flying. They're driven by manpower
sometimes or they're towed by space. It's like, I think
it needs to be a reverb on that quack if possible. Okay,
hopefully we can achieve Okay, sy give us some yeah,
give us some sci fi music every time we say that.
(26:54):
So yeah. So he also, interestingly enough, thinks about how
an engine could be made that would use the same
natural principles as uh, doves and eagles. But he's specifically
I think inspired by the old legends of mechanical birds. Yeah,
(27:17):
and clearly inspired by a lot of like if you're
talking about chariots, I mean, it sounds to me like
he's trying to harness the power of the gods and
all of this. But despite all of this kind of ludicrous,
outlandish flying chariot imagery and space keys, and again, that
wasn't his thing. That was from a science fiction story
that he just pulled inspiration from. His methods were actually
(27:38):
somewhat grounded in the science, at least of the time. Right,
his flying chariot would technically incorporate technical details that you'd
see in the designs of of ships, utilizing principles of
atmospherics uh and some of the really popular kind of
clockwork automata of the time, and also early experimental physics. Um.
(28:04):
And he would ultimately kind of squash all of these
disparate kind of like elements together in synthesizing a series
of theories and skills that would allow him to propose
something incredible. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm so inspired by this,
you know, and and ridiculous historians, we hope you're inspired
(28:28):
by this too. He is thinking through this logically, He
is thinking through this as practically as he can. You know,
he spends years thinking about how how this would work,
like how we could conceivably do this. One of the
(28:49):
primary tenets of his belief is his understanding of the
gravitational pull of Earth, and he knows that this is
what anybody traveling to space will need to escape from. Right.
That's that's the first that's the first speed bump you
have to get over. We have to remember, however, this
(29:12):
was a good uh five decades before Isaac Newton had
his famous series of epiphanies and revelations. So at this
point where Wilkins life, he's still kind of confusing the
pull of gravity with the attraction of what we mentioned earlier,
Earth's magnetic field. And so with that assumption, he noticed
(29:34):
that a magnet wouldn't attract a compass needle at a
given point of separation. If he took the magnet far
enough away, the compass wouldn't catch it. And that's where
he got his number of twenty miles. He thought, you know,
once you get twenty miles above the surface of the Earth,
you're no longer close enough to the magnet. You're not
(29:56):
subject to It's uh, it's you know why, I guess
exactly exactly. So this is his initial problem to solve.
This is what he tackles. His question is, if I
want to get people to the Moon, what's the first
thing I need to do. The answer to that is
I need to get them twenty miles away from the
(30:18):
surface of the Earth. So let me work on that first.
And this is where this is where he gets into
the brain and storming. First, he starts with, um, let's
see you can you can see pictures of this on
Atlas Obscura. He starts with this open chariot and it
has wheels, and it has like this vertical rotating sail
(30:42):
that comes out of the backrest of the of the seat.
And his idea is that if they could get this
rolling on its wheels and lift a couple of dudes
up into space, then they could glide to a landing
using that sail on the Moon with the same wheels
from the chariot. I want to point out if you
(31:05):
look at his work now, yes, we understand it seems
a little weird, a little bit dr Seussian or whatever,
but um, he was doing his best and he thought
about the engineering right. He had a motor for this.
As you said, Ben, this really was an incredible time
for gadgets with things like you know, gear driven clocks
(31:26):
and all of these various automataw that used spring driven
kind of clockwork motors. Uh. And that is exactly what
he envisioned as the centerpiece for his flying chariot design.
UM gunpowder no less, which is another innovation that was
huge at the time. UM would actually be used to
rapidly wind up the machine so that the mechanism when
(31:50):
you powered it on, would cause this large kind of
explosion of energy that would then create the locomotion to
drive a pair of wings resembling you know, birds on
either side of the chariot. That would then allow the
chariot to theoretically fly upwards UH twenty miles conceivably, which
(32:14):
would then allow it to escape the Earth's pull. The
motor could then be switched off UH and glide towards
the I'm assuming he would have some sort of steering mechanism, right,
and otherwise you would just kind of wander willie nilly
and not have any you know, way of of navigating. Well,
for Wilkins, we have to remember that the idea here
(32:34):
is that the Moon exerts some sort of smaller level
of attraction, So like, once you get far enough away
from Earth, once you get to that twenty mile threshold,
then you will start to be naturally pulled towards the Moon.
Imagine him talking to these astronauts here, if he if
(32:56):
he was pitching this, and you would say, okay, we're
gonna get you out into space twenty miles out and
then I think, based on my opinion and what I
understand of the world, you'll just sort of go toward
the Moon. And I hope that's right exactly fingers crossed,
fingers crossed, this works out to my exacting specifications. Okay, okay, okay.
(33:21):
We set at the top of the show thinking it
might happen, but it's definitely happening. This has become a
two parter, still technically a proactive two parter. We had
the inkling that it was heading in that direction. Ben,
you had the forethought and the presciens to to actually
say it out loud, so we don't have to retroactively
stemp that out. Huge thanks to super producer Casey Bagraham
for putting up with us and our weird whims of
(33:44):
two parttery, but this one did seem like it was
worth it. Huge thanks to Christopher Haciota is here in spirit,
Jonathan Strickling the Quister. Huge, huge thanks to Eaves, Jeff
Co Big big thanks to one of the stars of
our personal constellation, Gabe Luizier, who will be returning on
air at some point soon, so stay tuned. It also
stay tuned for part two of this series, which is
(34:06):
arriving later this week. What a ride, man, No, what
a ride? I really dig this Wilkins guy. Yeah, it
seems like a real mench It's a ride almost more
exciting than when you first rode Space Mountain when you
were a little kid. Can you imagine what that would
be like now, mind Blonde, We'll see you next time, folks.
(34:34):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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