Did Reagan's Star Wars program win the Cold War?

Putting lasers in space to blast Soviet missiles out of the air was a very real part of Ronald Reagan's defense policy. While his "Star Wars" program was derided at home and abroad, historians are beginning to wonder if it didn't help win the Cold War after all.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to you stuff you should
know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Schuckers

(00:21):
Bryant sitting across from me. Hi. Yeah, have you ever
seen Dying Darko? Dude, that's one of my favorites. You
know when he takes that mescaline and like that thing
comes out of his chest and he starts following it. Yeah,
he doesn't take that scale. But yeah, sometimes I feel
when we're sitting across from another we're connected by one
of those like a warm hole of fellowship. Yeah, like

(00:45):
from the Abyss that's what it sort of looked like. Yeah,
it did look a lot like that. I love that movie. Yeah,
when um, when Ed Harris takes all that mescaline that
movie and sees the sees that thing come up out
of the water, it was just like that mess one.
No movies, how's it coming in which people take mescalin?
There's plenty of this. Sure, this is what people have

(01:11):
been complaining about lately. Who's been complaining? Tell me their names?
Various people, people have been complained, Oh you bring something up.
I feel like we should address something. We haven't done
this in a really long time. It appears to me
that we have a lot of newcomers. Yeah, welcome, Yes, welcome.
UM and I think anyone who's been following us the

(01:32):
whole time it kind of gets the stuff you should know,
JAM right. But it seems like there's a lot of
people who don't quite understand what we're doing and think
that we purport to be infallible experts on everything, and
that we don't just get things wrong from time to time.
We're just a couple of guys who are pretty decent
at researching. That doesn't mean like we invented the topic

(01:54):
that we're talking about, or that we didn't just walk
right past UM a fact or some thing that we
missed in our research. It comes up, it happens from
time time, So I guess if you're just joining us,
that's probably something good to keep in mind. We don't
claim to be experts, so don't hold us to that standard,
because we're not trying to reach that standard. We're just
trying to impart some really great information as factually as possible.

(02:19):
UM and Uh, we love science and wonder great, be good. Yeah,
all right, how are you doing? I'm awesome. Do you
have anything to get off of your chest? No, just
welcome the paminacies. Many sandwiches are in the corner. Help yourself. So, Chuck,

(02:39):
do you remember a while back we talked what we've
talked about this stuff a lot, mutual assured destruction. We
did a podcast on that specifically, didn't we we did? Um?
We did one on who who won the Cold War?
Did one on how to steal a nuclear bomb? Yeah,
like we've done. It's just this fascinating period of world history,

(03:01):
the Cold War, agreed, incredibly tense, incredibly scary, and this
is our history. It is in part because you're half Russian. No,
but um, I was alive and well, and the young
kids weren't. Yeah, we've talked about this before. Um so Uh.

(03:23):
The central I guess, the fulcrum of the Cold War,
the fact that the reason we're all still here is
that was the doctrine of mutual sure destruction, which is
basically like we had enough nukes to wipe out the
entire world. The Soviet Union had enough nukes to wipe
out the entire world. So we were just there in
a tense fragile de conte. How about a nice game

(03:45):
of chess exactly, That's why we're still here. So, Um,
this was I guess this accepted reality for every president
and every premiere um from well, I guess who for
us from icon This mutual is sure destruction doctrine was
just kind of a part of daily life. Um. But

(04:08):
when Ronald Reagan came into office, he came up with
a different plan he didn't need, so instead of a
tense standoff, he found that untoward. I guess I think
he found it. From my understanding of Reagan, he would
have found it untoward because it didn't give America a
clear advantage. Well, the article says he found it morally

(04:29):
and politically distasteful. I agree with him in that Reagan
didn't like mutual or sure destruction for one reason or another.
So he came up with something a game changer. You
would call it today. If you read books that of
an airplane is also reading at the same time, that's right,
what is it? Josh? He came up with the Strategic

(04:51):
Defense Initiative, which the press like to call start the
Star Wars program. And I remember this very very well,
because it was largely derided in the press for a
bunch of reasons. We're gonna talk about Yeah, I remember
very well too. It was all over Mad magazine. Um,

(05:11):
it was all over time. There were awesome illustrations of
like satellites with laser shooting out of them that like
you could see in the mainstream media a lot. Sure, Um,
But yeah, I also remember it kind of just basically
being generally disliked by the public. Yeah, as well. Pretty
much it was. It was to be laughed at in

(05:34):
many circles, although it was a very serious thing. It was,
and it was laughed at for a lot of reasons.
But that we're gonna go over so Reagan. On March three,
he held an address to the nation, little televised speech,
and in it he challenged the um scientific community UM,

(05:55):
who he said had created nuclear weapons, to make those
very same weapons quote UM impotent and obsolete. And that
kind of became the rallying cry. Yeah, like, let's make
nukes impotent and obsolete. And the way you do that
is to make it so that we have a missile
defense system that can shoot down every single nuclear warhead

(06:18):
that Russia has in its arsenal all at once if
need be. Yeah, after launch. Um, that is so like
if they launched their missiles, we can shoot them down
in space and um, in Reagan's view, which you know
I can see his point at the time, um, there
would not be any more need for He thought it
would like neuter the Cold War in its tracks. Soviet

(06:41):
Union thought that's not too cool. They thought, yet, and yet,
and yet, because well a lot of a lot of
people felt like it was going to escalate the arms race.
The Soviets thought, this just means you have a clear
advantage over us. This doesn't neuter like it neuters us,
It doesn't neuter you, right, and said as many times

(07:02):
as the Soviets could stand to hear it that, Um,
this was strictly a missile defense system, a net or
a shield if you will, Um, that that would only
be used in the event that a Soviet nuclear launch
was detected. Right, But the Soviets were saying, or you
could just shoot all of our missiles down and then

(07:24):
launched a strike, a first strike where we would have
no way to retaliate. So, yeah, this is totally unacceptable.
And yeah, the Russians rallied against it. But not just
them the here at home. There are a lot of
people who didn't really care for it, including the public
who thought it was a pipe dream, or who thought
it would escalate a new arms racist Soviets, or who

(07:47):
just thought it was going to be a huge like
money pit. Yeah, and it was a lot of those things.
Um And when we say Soviets, let's go ahead and
call out the premier that I didn't remember Yuri and
drop off. I didn't remember him. I don't remember him either,
and I looked him up. He was only I mean that.
It seems like there was a lot of premiers there

(08:08):
for a while, but like died surely thereafter. I think
he was in like like less than a year and
a half. Uh. He was like the KGB had something
to do with it in vodka. Um, so he was
the premier at the time. He wasn't a fan. They
launched a big propaganda campaign. It says their propaganda went

(08:30):
toward uh poopoo ing the Star Wars defense program, even
though they didn't think it was gonna work. So neither
did our Congress. Apparently right Apparently the Soviets were like,
this is not a feasible program. Well, and they said
it violates a couple of important treaties UM. The A
b M, the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty of seventy two,
which the Soviet Union in in UH the United States

(08:53):
were both a part of, said that at the time
that was two ground based missile defense systems you were allowed.
Later on it was one. And I guess this would
have been more than two. Not only that ground based
is a an operative term in this case, because this
was going to be this this strategic defense initiative was
going to be space based, and that violates another treaty
N seven Outer Space Treaty says that you cannot use

(09:18):
weapons of mass destruction and space. And that's pretty much
what was going on, or that was what was planned,
right right. So UM, all right, so that's that's why
they don't like it, right why? And Congress didn't like it.
Congress didn't like it either. Most people in Congress. They
they apparently the UM, the Missile Defense Agency attributes UM

(09:41):
coining the term star wars to describe the Strategic Offense
Deation initiative to mock it really UM to Ted Kennedy
and an interview in The Washington Post, like almost right
after Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, and Reagan spent
the rest of the time he was in office trying
to simultane get this push through and to get everyone

(10:02):
to stop calling it star wars, because with no luck.
Had had it caught the American public's imagination like, oh, yeah,
star wars, let's just go ahead and blow up Russia
with star wars, he would have been like, yeah, let's
call it star wars. It's awesome. But it was like
Reagan star Wars, that crazy old kuk. He's got all

(10:22):
time and he wants to put weapons in space and
just shoot lasers around and all that. So he spent
a lot of time lobbying against people calling it star wars,
but it didn't work. Now he'd tried to go by
the name Strategic Defense in this initiative, and you know
how the press is. I think he used to get
a hold of something. It's all over. He was probably
even willing to to um allow it to be called

(10:44):
the sd I. I'll bet he was even like bed I.
So Europe wasn't all in favor the Allies. They had
some concerns about the balance of power and how this
would affect it obviously, And like you said, congress Um,
not everyone was against it, but they had some major issues,
largely a the cost and the is it even possible?

(11:09):
Like are we just pipe dreaming here on these lasers?
And they were kind of right well at the time,
they were so in in Reagan's defense, he said from
the outset like, this can take years, decades. This is
not going to be an overnight thing. And he also
said we're going to test a lot of different stuff
right that he was like he was well aware of

(11:30):
the technology didn't exist, or if it did exist, it
was like a glimmer in some National laboratory scientists eyes
and it was just in the nascent stages, so um
from the outside. He commissioned some reports and the one
that kind of got picked up was the Fletcher Report.
And the Fletcher Report basically said, here are eight things
you need to build the Strategic Defense Initiative, everything from

(11:52):
sensors that can detect when uh intercontinental ballistic missile launch
is launched because they don't phone you up and say
we've launched exactly right, and you need to make sure
that they're accurate and it's not going to be like
a wargames thing where it's like whatever, um, you also
need to come up with some incredible guided missile systems, UM.

(12:14):
Just just like I think there were like eight different
different aspects that basically either needed to be created or
needed to be refined to the point where they might
as well be created from scratch. And Reagan said do this. Yeah,
he said, press on. And I think a lot of
people at the time in Congress, at least we're saying,
good idea, let's use this as a bargaining tool in

(12:35):
the arms race, Like we don't really have to do
it right there, like everyone thinks you're serious exactly, And
he said this could work as a bargaining chip, and
he was like, no, I really want the star wars. Uh.
I'm sorry sd I. So apparently um GO got Reagan
to meet him for UM Arms Limitations talks in Iceland

(12:56):
in October, and Reagan and went and they had this
great talk and like basically gorbon Chop was like, let's
end mutuals your destruction. Let's basically get rid of our arsenals.
And the Soviets were just throwing like bone after bone
under the table and Reagan just can't believe his luck
and then all of a sudden, Gorbon at the end

(13:18):
is like, okay, so we'll go ahead and sign off
on this, but all this is contingent that you give
up Star Wars, right, and Reagan stood up and the
left he left, Yeah, which is kind of like that's
a little crazy maybe, but that's the level of commitment.
He apparently had two Star Wars. Well yeah, not too
long after, the Soviets says, well, you know what, we
gotta do something. We can't build a Star Wars And

(13:41):
it's actually a pretty good idea they said we can, well,
at least they thought they could, um undertake what they
called the Polyus skiff, which was will event a network
of weapons to destroy your Star Wars machine, um, which was, hey,
that's pretty good thinking. But they didn't have the funding
and uh it was not very successful either. No, they didn't.

(14:04):
And that leads us to um a point if I
may skip around a little chucture, but um history has
kind of vindicated Reagan in one way, like his Star
Wars program didn't go anywhere, but it wasn't given very
much time. And the reason why is because the fall
of the Soviet Union happened within less than a decade

(14:27):
after he announced the star Wars initiative. The program, Uh,
the Soviet Union fell collapsed entirely. Uh and with some
people attribute that to the defense spending that he immediately
caused them to to start expending because of the Star
Wars program. True, so he did kind of ratchet up

(14:49):
this arms race, but the Soviets couldn't keep up. This
came on the heels of US bleeding them dry in
Afghanistan secretly funding the muja Haddein which became the Taliban
by the way, we I don't know how much Reagan knew,
but these the Soviets were hurting financially, and then all
of a sudden you introduced star Wars and they couldn't
keep up. Yeah, and the follow of Soviet Union. With

(15:11):
that came obviously the at least huge threat of all
out nuclear war because they were the major players. Um,
you didn't have to worry about the smaller countries, you know,
as far as the mad goes, right, but you have
to worry about rogue states and all that. Making sure
that the Russians could hang on to their arsenal, which
they didn't do very well necessarily. But yes, the mutual

(15:33):
assured destruction just went the way the dinosaur when the
Soviets fell. Um. H W. Bush comes along. Yeah, people
get annoyed by the way and when we don't say
President so and so? Who does? Where are you see?
Are this on Facebook? Now? I've seen people right in before,
and I've heard other people say you should always address
them as President so and so. But I hear all
the time people say Obama, Clinton, Reagan. So no, no

(15:57):
disrespect intended, folks. H W. Bush comes along, Soviet Union
has fallen, So he's like, you know what, we need
to really cut back on this scope of this sd I.
He probably would have just scrapped it all together, but
he was pretty loyal to uh Reagan, of course. And um,
so he refocuses a program, cuts it back. Clinton comes

(16:19):
along President Clinton and refines it even more and cuts
it back even more. And by the time that happened,
it wasn't anything like Reagan's initial Star Wars program. No,
not at all. No, but it would become handy, which
we'll get too. So let's talk about what Star Wars was.
We've kind of given like a little bit of a

(16:39):
broad overview. But um, until I started researching this. I
hadn't really thought about it, but intercontinental ballistic missiles once
capable of saying, traveling from Moscow to New York, I
have to leave Earth's atmosphere and inner orbit. And so
the idea was we would have something up there that

(17:01):
could shoot it down when it entered orbit, That's right,
Which meant that we had to place. We had to
weaponize space. Yeah, and I wonder if they ever gave
any thought to what nuclear bombs going off in space
would mean. I mean, surely there's repercussions here. I know
it's space, But you can't just go willie nilly setting
off nuclear bombs in space? Right? Did in Nevada? Well,

(17:24):
that's that's true. Yeah, and look what happened there? What
happened there? Well, I'm just saying it. It's it's got
to cause some kind of harm to space even though
it's space, right, or does it just sucking? Do it? Like?
I have no idea. This is something I could not find.
I mean the research that couldn't find anything. Yeah. No,
I I understand what you're saying. In space is a vacuum,

(17:46):
so it should have some effect or no effect whatsoever.
But it's got to and got to do something. There's
someone out there really smart that hopefully is going to
email me. I guess though. The the idea behind this
was fairly utilitarian, where it was like, Okay, this possible
consequence in space or saving millions of lives here on Earth,

(18:07):
and they just said whatever, that's fine, of course. Um,
but so you have something up in space it's capable
of shooting down an intercontinental ballistic missile like an X
ray laser. That's this is like where we kind of
come to some of the um Like, there were a
lot of proposals that were kind of out there, but

(18:28):
they went a hadn't spent a lot of money testing
these things like the X ray laser, and that was
a physicist Edward Teller, Um, it was needed. The hydrogen bomb. Yeah,
I saw that. It was his proposal, so they obviously
listened to him and um, it was gonna use power
generated by a nuclear blast. And it never performed well,

(18:49):
and it really became the focus point for the press
and for David Letterman and for Johnny Carson to make
fun of because it was an X ray laser and
this is coming off the heels of the Star Wars
movies themselves with their X ray blasters. Actually they would
star blowing up yeah, or the dust star blowing up

(19:11):
that planet all then I think they focused the laser
and boom, Um. You just saved me from a lot
of iro because I was gonna say, tattooing, I might
have got it wrong. I think it was all the wrong, man.
I hope you got it. If there's one thing that
I ever hope you got right, it was that one
so so many Star Trek fans would be writing in

(19:31):
so that there's the X ray laser and it doesn't
go over very well, which was very much the focus
of the media, and they were being chided for the
fact that they know sounded really far out right, but
they they tested it, it just wouldn't work. The idea
behind it was that they were going to have a small,
controlled nuclear explosion that would power this laser right to

(19:52):
create a massive amount of X rays concentrated amount of
X rays um that would be focused on a missile
and then go kaboom. It was called Project ex Caliber,
so it had a cool name to but apparently Teller
or the people behind it were accused of falsifying the
initial UH test result. Yeah, so it kind of went

(20:16):
down and scandal and mockery and everything. So in the
little box that said worked or didn't work, they just
checked worked and like shuffled away like cartoons sweat like
coming off. Therefore, so some of the other ideas that
they tried um and spent billions of dollars trying um
kinetic warheads, apparently they would collide in the orbit. It's

(20:38):
like shooting a shooting a missile at another missile UM.
And that one actually was like the big dog on
the block for a while at first in the early
stages of Star Wars, because they figured out that you
could have this thing like basically a satellite based garage
with like ten missiles in it and you just have
it floating up there and then shoot at a missile.

(20:59):
And when one came up and it was a good idea,
they're like, we can actually do that, Like I think
we can do this. The problem is that somebody pointed
out that all the Russians had to do is shoot
a missile at your garage, and for their one missile,
they took out ten. So people said, okay, let's get
back to it, and they started exploring other one it's
like bringing a knife to a gunfight. It's like bringing

(21:20):
a missile to a multi missile fight. No. I don't
think that analogy works at all. Out. I think it's
like a sitting duck. Okay. Uh. The other thing they
wanted to try, Josh, was this rail guns mounted on satellites.
Did you see the popular mechanics drawing of it. I did,
and it's pretty wicked. Yeah. I gotta admit. It looks

(21:41):
like an I beam coming out of the satellite, but
it's shooting like a three ounce lug at two hundred
miles a second. It's pretty wicked. Yeah. Um, that one
didn't go very far because of the um energy requirements. Yeah,
it was just way too expensive in an energy sense. Uh.
And then the m I R A c L miracle laser. Um.

(22:03):
It was another laser, but it was ground based using mirrors, right,
and it was a chemical laser. It wasn't like an
uh nuclear X ray laser. It's like they just started
to try to throw cool sci fi terms of the
time together, like let's make laser, but let's make it
a nuclear X ray laser and we'll shoot missiles out

(22:24):
of the sky with strawn laser tron um. So then
this article doesn't really go into it. But after after
some of these were kind of asked and answered. Um
up until and even beyond the fall of the Soviet Union,
the Shining Star and all this became this these things
called bright Pebbles. Does that ring a bell? It did

(22:46):
for me when I ran across it, I was like, Ahi,
those two words sound very familiar. So Bright Pebbles was
the little garage with ten missiles. These were very small ones,
like say, um twenty to fifty hound mini garages that
would shoot slugs or would ram themselves. But I think
they would shoot slugs. And rather than having one garage

(23:08):
with ten missiles, you would have thousands of these little
things all over the country, all over the all over space.
They're in space. Yeah, so they were hoping for a
constellation of up to like four thousand of these things
just floating around in space. The cool thing about him
was if you took one out, there were still three
thousand nine left. Right. They were autonomous, so they could

(23:32):
attack on their own if they if they wanted to.
They could also coordinate and communicate with one another to
launch coordinated attacks against missiles. It would be very tough
to overwhelm these things UM, and they would have been
designed to protect US space based assets like satellites, and
if the Soviets ever launched anything like it, these things

(23:52):
were trained to just go right after them and blow
them out of the sky too. So basically they were
like little sentinels in space and they were going to
be cost effected to It was gonna cost about eleven
billion in UM in nineteen eighty four dollars I think,
which is about twenty billion a day. It was considering
that they were looking at like twenty billion which is

(24:14):
about forty three billion in UH today's dollars, just to
get some of the other ones off the ground. So
to get a thousand off the ground that you could
mass produce just eleven billion dollars at the time was
quite a bargain. And had the fall of the Soviet
Union not coming gone, we probably would have bright pebbles
up in space right now. And as a matter of fact,
they were proven. They were tested UM the Clementine probe

(24:37):
which mapped the Moon in that was a bright pebble
that they basically redesigned instead of UH as a weapon.
They used it to map the moon and it did
so successfully, so they would have worked. And lastly, yes,
a computer model of bright pebbles found that had they

(24:58):
been in operation during the flirt first go for um,
they would have shot down. Said I'm scuds, scud missiles
with accuracy, pretty crazy, but well cheap. I was gonna
say expensive. No, they're cheap. They just didn't have time
to come along. Well. The problem with the rest of
the plans is I saw one quote that said that

(25:20):
at the time they were just sort of taking these
ideas almost from science fiction, and they felt like they
were or some scientists felt like they were a decade
away from even like they're saying, we can't even start
this for ten years. We need to research for ten
years to see if any of this is even feasible.
But instead of sort of like trying these things out,

(25:42):
Reagan was encouraging that though. I mean, I'm sure he
was like, hurry up, but at the same time, and
I think he got the impression he was saying, like
sky's the limit, guys, like usual imagination, do whatever you
can come up with. The sky's the limit beyond. So
did any of these ever work at all? So apparently
a couple did, like they shot down three, they shut

(26:03):
down a stationary object on Earth, they shot down, um,
a mock warhead in the Earth's atmosphere, and they shot
down another mock warhead in space. And one of those
things was going twenty one. So that so some of
these technologies, because they had a bunch of different groups
testing all these different things, and some of them were

(26:24):
successful for the most part now, but it eventually led
to a different sort of defense system that we still
have today, right or is it that what some people say, Yeah,
like the ballistic missile defense system, Um, it's it's the
out growth of Star Wars. Like the idea that we
have a missile defense system comes from Star Wars, even

(26:47):
though we're not using X ray lasers. A lot of
people say it had some benefit in the end after all, Yeah,
because we're using sensors, those same sensors. Like a lot
of the research that was not like X ray lasers,
but still had practical applications we're still doing today. And
apparently in Pearl Harbor last month, a missile shot down

(27:08):
another missile over the Pacific successfully as a test. Yeah,
I was like, somebody's attacking Pearl Harbor again. You don't
really want they figured the American public desmint here. But yeah,
the Chinese shot a missile at us and we shot
it down, so everything's was close, So I guess it's
about it. Huh. Yeah, Um, that's all I got. Okay,

(27:30):
So if you want to learn more about Star Wars,
I think it'd bring up a bunch of crazy stuff
if you type star Wars in the search bar how
stuff works, like the one man Star Wars Star Wars
One Man Show. Yeah, that's pretty good, uh, Landau Dr
Pepper Calarisian remember that one. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

(27:53):
Just type star Wars in the search bar how stuff
works dot com And I said that, which means it's
time for Listener Mainland. Josh and Louis listener Mail. We're
gonna do a little Facebook question to stuff that we
like to do from time to time, and this is
happening live, which is pretty exciting. That is scary because

(28:14):
I didn't have Listener Mai already and this was a
good thing to do. So let's just look through some
of these and you let me know what you want
to read. Uh. Our friend Kubi Don Kuby says, uh,
is there a particular side of the recording booth that
you each always sit on. The answer to that is yes, Um,

(28:36):
I guess if you were facing from here, Josh, it's
on the right. I sit on the left, But you
really come in from the other side, So Josh SIT's
on the far side and I sit on the near side.
That's the best way to say it. That's very well put. Yeah,
and I think all the podcasters probably no one ever
sits in a different seat. That'd be really weird. Yeah,

(28:56):
I'm sure everybody sits in there. Like if I said
over there to be disconcerting, they'd be. You'd have to
be a like bona fide nihilist to do that. It
would just be odd. Um. I've got one from Jerome Hanson.
I would say Jerome, right, yeah. Uh who is your
favorite Marvel superhero? Uh? I guess I would say Punisher.

(29:22):
I know he's not a superhero, he's just a straight
up hero because he doesn't have any superpowers. But he's
definitely the comic I was into the most as a youngster.
I'm gonna go spider Man really yeah? Yeah, identified yeah
with Peter Parker not spider Man. Um favorite band of
all time? I feel like we've answered that many times. Okay,

(29:45):
I'm going with Pavement still, Pixie's still okay. Um. I
would like to know your opinion of and Margaret. That's
from Brian Throckmorton. I think and Margaret in her day
was one of the most smoking hot women on the planet.
So my only familiarity with and Margaret was from The
flat Stones when they had that character and Mark Rock

(30:08):
and she always seemed like she was on lithium. So
I don't have a great opinion of and Margaret. Gotcha, Oh,
this is good, William Bear. If you were speed limit,
what would you be? And why? You know what I
would be? Well, I would be one of those special
speed limits in state parks. It's like five miles an hour.
Do you know that there's the parking garage here is

(30:29):
four and a half? Is it really? Yeah? Yeah, that's
what I would be. Then four and a half miles
an hour. It's like they're showing off because just take
your foot off and let the idol take you. Man,
that's where That's where I'm at. What would you be?
This is arguably the strangest question I've ever been asked.
I would say, Okay, that's good. Okay, it's fast, but

(30:50):
it's not super dangerous. I'm not even to read into it.
I just that's what comes to mind. Okay, gotcha you going?
Uh uh, let's see. Lisa to Shara asks us, what's
our least favorite food? Lisa's at the regular too, But
I read that I recognized the name. Hey there, what

(31:11):
are you going with? Least favorite food would have to
be Oh. I was just talking to Amory about this
the other day. It's like one thing I really don't
like and I can't remember it because I generally like everything.
What's yours? Let me think about it. Probably mushrooms on anything.
I'm just not a fan. Yeah. I know they say

(31:32):
they don't have taste, but then I'm always like cold.
Then why are you put it in something they can
virtually ruin? Um? The pizza? Yeah, oh, I've got it.
Cream cheese, cream cheese with stuffed in it, like she's
spread a cream cheese ball, cream cheese, and just about anything.
Like if you have a plain bagel hot with cream cheese,

(31:55):
that's fine, that's your man. Once you put like a
garden style old cream cheese with something else, yeah, I
don't like that stuff. Either okay, Matt sailor boxers or briefs.
We've been asked that I'm the boxer guy. Katie Hart
favorite punch line to a joke. Uh, those aren't pillows.

(32:18):
I don't. I can't say anyone I know. Uh, you
got any more on here? Why don't we do like
two more? Let's see Charlotte Gene asks, how do we
take our coffee? I take mine black atty two. So
there you go. That's kind of boring. I got a
lot of hair on the old chest from it. And
you know, Jason Domini from our friends at uh Pat

(32:39):
Dorphin Bronson, the amazing coffee makers and roasters, which you
should not coffee makers roasters, we should support them by
the way. Um. He says he gave me a personal
tour of the thing in a coffee one on one
and he says, if you drink good coffee and it's
roasted properly, you don't want sugar. Oh yeah, I definitely

(33:00):
don't want milk, but you definitely don't want sugar because
he's like, it's really sweet. He's like, coffee beans are
exceptionally sweet and when you roast it right, um, and
he called it Charbucks, which I thought was kind of funny.
He said their stuff is just like bitter because they
char it too much because they get beans from all
over the place and when they do that, they want

(33:21):
to make them all taste the same, and the way
to do that is to overroast. This is our friend
h Rob Pointer was telling us that, like there's he
goes to a coffee place in l A where like
they don't even have creamer sugar. Really, like they don't
even offer it if you want it, like they tell
you to leave. Awesome. Yeah, when he made his coffee
that day, it was great. Um, all right, so I

(33:43):
think that that's good enough for now. We'll hit this
up on the next one. Well yeah, okay, we'll be
back people in the meantime. You can contact us at
s Y s K podcast on Twitter. You can hit
us up on Facebook dot com whether we have a
question out or otherwise at Facebook dot com slash Stuff
you Should Know, and you can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. Brought to you

(34:23):
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