September 18, 2026 • 41 mins
David Hahn was a kid who was really into science. So much that he built a nuclear reactor in his mother's potting shed. And it worked.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
All right, Chuck here winding it down with number 11.
We wanted to finish on an odd number because odd
things are weird. And this is the SYSK Gets Weird playlist.
The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout. What a great episode.
I hope you guys enjoy it. I enjoyed it listening
to it in QA the other day all over again.
So listen to it right now. The Story of the
(00:24):
Nuclear Boy Scout. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
and Jerry's here, too. And this is a good old-fashioned
barn burner of a Stuff You Should Know type topic. Woo!
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Whiz-bang!
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Chuck, somebody sent this in as a suggestion recently, I think, right?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, you know, I think you and I had both
been aware of this story, but we did get a
recent suggestion from David Parcher.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, David Parcher. I think just a couple of weeks
ago sent in this suggestion, and look at the timing.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah. Well, thank you, David. And we're going to talk
about another David. That is David Hahn, the nuclear Boy Scout. Yep.
And this is one of those where we owe a
huge debt to a single human because this story may
have just gone– Fairly unnoticed as a pretty localized local
newspaper item.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
If it hadn't have been found by a gentleman named
Ken Silverstein, who ended up writing a very large piece
in Harper's Magazine and then a book called The Radioactive
Boy Scout, colon, the true story of a boy in
his backyard nuclear reactor. So big thanks to Ken. A
lot of this came from your work.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, and shout out also to the journalists from the
Natural Resources News Service, which is this investigative journalist group
that just does a public good, like investigate stories and
then turn around and give them to news outlets. And
apparently that's how Ken came across the story and began
(02:09):
researching it. So there's two people that were responsible for it,
at least.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, and three, because we have to count David Hahn. Yeah.
the Michigan teenager who in the 90s managed to create
a nuclear reaction in the potting shed of his mom's house.
It is a story that is interesting and amazing, but
also very sad in its ending.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, and technically we should thank five people because it
took Patty and Ken Hahn to reproduce and create David Hahn.
So we're at five people now that we need to thank.
All right.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
So David was born October 1976. That's the year you
were born, right?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah. I was just a couple months older than him.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah. And look what this guy did.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
What have you ever done?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Thanks for that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You got to hit podcast. You're not sweating it.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh, I'm sweating.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
When he was a little, and we say this because
it very much figures into the end of David's story.
It's very sad. But his mother, Patty, was diagnosed with
depression and paranoid schizophrenia, was hospitalized through his early childhood
off and on, and she would eventually take her own
life in 1996.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, and that will play into the story later on.
But Patty remains a character throughout most of it. So
too does David's father, Ken, who we mentioned. He's person five,
we need to thank. Patty and Ken got divorced, I think,
when David was really little, like maybe a toddler. And
Ken ended up marrying a coworker, Person number six we
(03:44):
need to thank, Kathy Missig. Ken and Kathy were both
engineers at General Motors. This whole thing took place in
the suburbs of Detroit, specifically Clinton Township, Michigan, specifically later
on in a subdivision called Gulf Manor, as we'll see.
So David lives with Ken and Kathy, and then on
(04:05):
weekends he goes and stays with his mom, Patty, and
her boyfriend, person number seven who we need to thank,
Michael Palasek. And they're the ones I believe who lived
in Golf Manor. And under by all accounts, like David
lived a pretty normal childhood, just doing normal childhood things.
It wasn't until he was 10 that his life found
(04:28):
its purpose, which is pretty early if you think about
it for your life to find its purpose.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah. And by the way, if you live in Golf Manor,
hold your emails. We know you're in Commerce Township. Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Thank you for that. I think his dad lived in
Clinton Township. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It's probably like where I lived in New Jersey. It's
like all these old townships just run together. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's what it looked like on the map.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah. So the person we really need to thank.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
This is number eight, person eight.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Is like you mentioned, when Dave was 10 years old,
his step mom's father. So I guess his step grandfather,
if you count that as a thing. He was also
an engineer at GM. He gave little David a book
called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. And little David
was fascinated with science and chemistry, but in particular with
(05:18):
the stories of Mary and Pierre Curie and their radium discovery.
And the glow, I think the glow of that whole
thing really enthralled this young guy.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, this book was heavily illustrated and like the instructions
kind of looked, had the same look as like those
Ripley's Believe It or Not comic strips almost. Totally something
that would appeal to a kid that age or a
little older. You can find it online in its entirety
as a PDF. And I looked at the illustration and
don't really know what he saw. And it's actually black
(05:52):
and white. that glows to some lines coming off of
a beaker or whatever.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Imagination, my friend.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
For some reason, it enthralled him so much so that
within two years of receiving that book, he was devouring
his father's chemistry textbooks at age 12.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah. So he was, I mean, these were books that
were more advanced than his age. Clearly a smart guy.
At the age of 14, he apparently made nitroglycerin by himself,
which evidently isn't the hardest thing to do, but is
very dangerous to do. There are other stories like he
brought wanted to make his own fireworks at Boy Scout camp.
(06:29):
So he brought some powdered magnesium, ended up catching on
fire and ruined a tent. So what else? He tried
to develop a self tanning method that didn't work out right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
He overdosed on canthoxanthin, which I can't remember which one,
which episode that came up in. But it's a pigment
that turns your skin orange from the inside out. And
that's what he did. He was trying to come up
with a self-tanning method that didn't use any kind of
UV radiation.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah. No comment.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
But he was that kind of dude. He would just
turn up at like a scout meeting or something bright
orange and be like, yeah, too much canthoxanthin.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
So, yeah, he's exactly that kid. He's also the kind
of kid who essentially– destroys his bedroom because he's doing science.
The walls were wrecked. The carpet was stained. They had
to move the carpet out. Eventually, his dad was like, listen,
this is getting serious. You're destroying our home. You got
(07:30):
to move him to the basement, first of all. And
when we're not here, you can't be in here. either.
They took away equipment. They took away some chemicals. And finally,
they said, all right, this is out of hand. You
can't do this anymore. So he said, all right, I'll
do it like every divorced kid says, I'll do it
at the other parent's house.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
That's right. And so he did. He ended up setting
up a lab in his mom's potting shed in Golf
Manor in Commerce Township. And this is where the story
really starts to kind of take off. Because his dad
was getting really worried that his son was basically creating
(08:15):
and selling drugs. That's what he was doing with his
chemistry experiments. And so he and his stepmom would drop
in on the library when he was supposedly there to
see if he was there. They really did not trust
this fascination with chemistry anymore. Which I mean, I can
understand if your kid blows himself up a couple of times,
you're like, what are you doing exactly here?
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So I don't know if he knew that David went
and set up a lab in his mom's potting shed
or not. And just was like, it's fine as long
as it's out of my house. I'm not sure. I've
never seen that either way. But one thing that he
did do to try to be like, OK, I think
you're creating drugs. You're probably on them. You may or
may not be selling them. None of those seem to
(08:57):
be true from what I can tell. You need to
become an Eagle Scout. And he pushed his son to
become an Eagle Scout.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah. And that's exactly what he did, as we will
later find out. But when it came time for merit
badge selection, he said, I want the one that says
atomic energy. And the Scoutmaster said, I think he told
the writer of the book, no one had ever chosen
that before in the history of the troop.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
So it kind of reminds me of the Brian Cox
scene in Rushmore with Bill Murray when he says he's
one of the worst students we've got. I can just
picture Brian Cox saying that, that no one's ever tried
for this badge before. But it was a legit badge.
It's kind of funny that it existed. It's different now,
as we'll see. But yeah. In 1963, they introduced the
(09:46):
Atomic Energy Badge. It came with a pamphlet that they
created with the nuclear energy industry that turned out to
have a lot of really useful information, almost like a
starter kit. on how to like source radioactive elements in
the real world.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
And how to get your own reactor going.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah. One of the projects you could do was to
build your own Geiger counter. Like it was serious stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah. Maybe so legit that, like I said, the Boy
Scouts would eventually change that badge. I think probably because
of what happened with David in 2005, they replaced it
with the nuclear science badge. Yes.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So, but he's still working on the original, the atomic
energy badge from 1963, right?
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So he's just devouring this. He's having the best time.
He visits a hospital ward to learn about x-rays, which
is part of the merit badge certification. And, The thing
that really changed things, though, Chuck, is he decided just
these things the merit badge was having him do, like
one of the things was draw a diagram of a
(10:57):
fission reaction. Yeah. Or build a model of a nuclear reactor,
but a model, like a cardboard model, basically, or paper mache. Or?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Or I will create my own nuclear reactor in my
mom's potting shed. he decided he was so psyched about
atomic energy that he wanted to do it himself.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah. I mean, I guess you do the model and
you're like, hey, that wasn't so hard. Let me see
if I can do it for real. And he wanted
to build, and this shows that he was a kid.
I don't think this was to cause harm. He wanted
to build a neutron gun. And the way I, just
for my research, this is speculation, but it didn't seem
(11:42):
like he was like, I want to build a neutron
gun to try and blow up the city that I
live in.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
It seemed more like a kid who was really into
science and sci-fi and chemistry and wanted to make a
little pew-pew gun. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I think neutron gun is a misleading term. I can't
get the Nintendo duck hunt gun out of my head
whenever I hear neutron gun. But really what a neutron
gun is, at least the one that David made, it's
a block of lead with a cavity carved out and
you put radioactive material in the cavity and then cover
(12:18):
it over with like aluminum foil. And then you just
point the aluminum foil side of that block of lead
At what you want to irradiate and then you try
to start a chain reaction, a nuclear reaction. That seems
to be the sum total of his goals. He wasn't
trying to build a bomb. He wasn't trying to sell
plutonium to the Libyans. He wasn't doing anything like that.
(12:41):
He just wanted to see if he could start a
nuclear chain reaction, this thing that had fascinated him since
he was 10 years old. And so he set about
doing that with help from this Eagle Scout merit badge pamphlet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Which makes the whole thing that much more nuts.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah, and also by adopting a persona as a professor
because he starts writing into organizations trying to get information,
trying to get materials, trying to get schematics. He said
he was Professor Han that taught at his high school,
Chippewa Valley High School. Go chipmunks. Are they?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I don't know. They better be.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And over the next few years, basically— And apparently, you know,
he he applied himself. He didn't apply himself in school.
He was smart, but he was failing academically. almost failing out,
basically barely passing like the math and English exams needed
to graduate eventually. But that is to say these letters
had like spelling errors and grammatical errors. It didn't seem
(13:42):
like they were written by a professor, but people bought it.
And before you know it, he's like corresponding as a
professor to these adults.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah. And these adults are just totally into this correspondence.
They're really enjoying helping this, who they think a high
school physics teacher learn math, the stuff he's looking for
about nuclear energy to ostensibly go and teach to the kids. Right.
So this correspondence is like genuine. The only thing illegitimate
about it was that he was misrepresenting who he actually was.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
A professor rather than a high school student. But other
than that, everything else about it seems to be pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah. Except for the fact that it's dangerous and illegal. Yes.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
So one of the people that he corresponded with, I
think he corresponded with him the most, was named Donald Erb, E-R-B.
And he was the guy who was the head of
the department that produces isotopes. If you need isotopes, you
can go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This is not you,
but like if you are in some sort of industry
that uses isotopes. And this herb will be like, I
(14:45):
got you. I got you covered. For some reason, they
come in these little baggies with like card suits printed
all over them. It's weird. That's a herb kind of touch.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
It's so nice.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
But he worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and nobody
helped David Hahn more than Donald Erb did, again, unwittingly.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, absolutely. So should we take a break?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
We should.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Okay. All right. I was about to keep going, but
let's take a break, and we're going to talk about
his pursuit of radioactive materials right after this. Radioactive Materials.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
By the way, Chuck, it's the Chippewa Valley Big Red,
which appears to be a giant cardinal. Oh. If you
ask me, that was a missed opportunity.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Chipmunks?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Chippewa chipmunks, the rabid chipmunks.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, I love it. All right. So when we left off,
David Hahn was getting serious about building this nuclear reactor.
He needs material to do that. So and we should
point out that, you know, I said it was dangerous.
It was dangerous. He did know this. He still pursued it.
But he like he had a lead shield. That he
(16:19):
worked with. He threw away his contaminated clothes. He left
his shoes in there and didn't take them in his house.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
It was like his driving shoes, but in a potting
shed that he was building a breeder reactor in.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Do you have driving shoes? Is that a thing?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I know that it's a thing from watching old episodes
of Frasier.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I've never heard that.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yes, you've seen driving shoes. People wear them and they're
totally unaware that you're not supposed to wear them out
of your car. But it's like if your car is
so nice... You take off your outdoor shoes and put
on your driving shoes that never leave your car. And
that way you don't get your car dirty.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I don't know if I have seen them. I guess
I just maybe didn't.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
They look kind of like a cross between a loafer
and a moccasin. And then the dead giveaway is the
tread on the bottom comes up the back of the
heel as well because of the position that your foot
is in when you're driving. It gives you grip.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
All right. I'm going to have to look this up.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
You've seen them.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
All right. All right. So it's amazing. 52 years old.
Never knew about this.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I was only probably 40 when I learned about it.
So I don't feel bad.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
All right. So he starts looking for materials. And these
are just a few sort of stories about he would
go about that. He wanted some americium 241 for this
neutron gun. in the booklet that he got from the
Boy Scouts, said you can get this stuff in smoke detectors.
So he tries to steal them from the Boy Scout camp,
(17:51):
got caught and sent home early. Then he writes smoke
detector companies saying, I need a bunch of these things
for a school project. Eventually, one company sold him 100
broken ones for 100 bucks. Yeah. Couldn't figure out how
to find this americium. So got in touch with another
smoke detector company. It was like, oh, well, here's where
you find it. And was able to extract americium enough
(18:14):
to like weld together with a blowtorch. Yes.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
So remember I was talking about the neutron gun is
a lump of lead with a cavity hollowed out. And
then you put your radioactive material in the cavity of lead.
Now we have this radioactive material.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Amerisium is– I looked up why it would be in
smoke detectors. Did you see why? No. It's really interesting.
Just for a second. So amerisium, because of its radioactive decay,
it creates a flow of ions, positive and negative ions,
that are moved across like this metal plate. And there's
(18:51):
a constant movement of ions that this amerisium is creating
from the air around it. And when smoke interacts with
those ions, it actually breaks that flow. That flow is
detected by the smoke detector, which triggers it to go off.
Isn't that just so bizarre? That's how your smoke detector works.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
And that's how they still work?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's still americium in smoke detectors today.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Amazing. Yeah. So you said he built his own Geiger counter.
I don't know if it was this one or if
he ended up getting another one, but he would drive
around upper Michigan. with this Geiger counter on, just looking
for naturally occurring uranium out in the world. And then
eventually he's like, this isn't working out. So he got
(19:37):
a Czechoslovakian firm that the NRC told him about and
sourced uranium ore.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, he had that Geiger counter mounted to his dashboard.
And apparently any time he drove, he had it turned on.
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, I mean, you've got to find this stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And he actually did find some stuff. It's called pitch blend,
and it's a source of low-grade uranium. And he tried
to extract it, but he couldn't purify it enough. So
like you said, he was like, well, I'll just buy
some pure uranium from a firm in Czechoslovakia. that he
heard about either from the pamphlet or from Donald Erb,
one of the two.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, another thing he did was the little mantle, like
the little mesh sacks that you tie onto a gas lantern.
He bought thousands of those because they have little tiny
amounts of thorium-232. And so, you know, he buys thousands
of these from surplus stores, buys thousands of dollars in
(20:31):
lithium batteries to extract lithium. So he's being very... you know,
I think showing a lot of initiative in at least
how to find this stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, I mean, like, he's using his after-school job money
to buy $ 1, 000 in lithium batteries to purify the thorium
that he got from the gas lanterns that he purchased
and extracted it from. Like, I can't imagine how much
time and effort this took. And by the way, he
did purify that thorium pretty well. I saw that he
got it to 9,000 times the level found in Nature
(21:03):
of radioactivity. And about 170 times the level that you
would need a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to possess.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
He also went around, of course, where you're going to
find old dangerous radioactive things, junkyards and antique shops. So
he would take that Geiger counter into a junk shop
or an antique store and he would walk around until
something lit up like radium paint. If you remember, I
think it was pretty excellent podcast on the radium girls.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And he would find radium paint in an old clock.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah. Yeah, he found a vial of paint just tucked
away inside of one. Then he really had his radioactive
material for his neutron gun. He actually stepped it up
and built a second gun. He'd also, from corresponding with
Donald Erb, gotten even better at creating a neutron gun
that was going to be useful in creating a nuclear reaction.
(22:03):
He also found that when he used the radium on,
I think, the thorium that he purified, he was trying
to trigger a chain reaction by bombarding thorium with neutrons.
That's what he was trying to do. He found that
the thorium wasn't converting into uranium like it was supposed to.
So he contacted Donald Erb and Donald Erb said, your
(22:23):
neutrons are too fast. You got to slow them down.
One of the best ways to slow them down is tritium.
And he said, well, where would I find tritium? And
apparently they use tritium to make the glowing sites on
gun scopes and gun sights. So he ordered, I think,
dozens of gun sights from mail order catalogs from stores.
(22:44):
And then he would scrape the tritium off and then
send them back and say, I need this sight repaired.
There's no tritium on it. And they would put more
tritium on it and send it back. And he'd just
create a new pseudonym and send that back. And that's
how methodical that kid was.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So this is all kid stuff. He's like, 14, 15
years old. Eventually, he turns 17 and he says, all right,
I think I want to build an actual nuclear reactor.
It's called a tiny breeder reactor. They've been around since
the early 1950s when the U.S. developed them, when we
(23:18):
were sort of the beginning of the age of trying
to use nuclear power for electricity. Mm-hmm. And they're like, well,
these little tiny breeder reactors might be a good way
to extend the supply of fuel or something. It never
quite worked out that way. I think they're still working
on that kind of thing in Russia and China. But
it never really went off the ground. But it was
(23:38):
enough to inspire David to think that maybe I can
build a small thing like this in my mom's potting
garage or potting shed.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah. The difference between a breeder reactor and a regular
reactor is that in a regular reactor, you just use
fuel and you get energy from the fuel. With the
breeder reactor, you get energy from the fuel, but it
also creates more fuel, and you end up with more
fuel than you started with. I saw it likened to
leaving your house or the car with a half a
(24:08):
tank of gas, and when you return home, the tank
is full. That's kind of like what it does, and
yet they just could never get it to work. But
that's what he was trying to do. And the reason
why is because you start with uranium-238, and that's the
most abundant uranium found in nature.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
That's right. So he doesn't have enough uranium, no matter
what kind it is, to create an actual chain reaction
for a normal reactor. So he says, maybe I can
at least do something. It seemed like he became sort
of obsessed just with this goal of creating some kind
of nuclear reaction himself. Yeah, yeah. Got a blueprint from
(24:45):
one of his dad's textbooks, took that americium and the
radium from his neutron guns, mixed it with some aluminum shavings,
some beryllium, wrap that up in aluminum foil. And basically,
you have yourself a very small reactor core right there.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, he created an atomic pile like the first one
that Fermi created in Chicago, but on a much, much
smaller scale. But it worked. It worked. Like, it worked.
He created, like you said, a nuclear reactor, and it
started a nuclear chain reaction. And it started to take off, actually,
pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Yeah. He's got that Geiger counter, and he's measuring this thing, like,
on a daily basis. And he's like, it's actually growing. Like,
it's getting more radioactive in here. I imagine he was
thrilled and also possibly a little bit like Matthew Broderick
in War Games where it's like, oh, wait a minute. Like,
(25:40):
what have I done here such that he was worried
and took it apart?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
He did. Apparently, he could detect it from five houses
down the street. And I looked up pictures of Golf Manor. And,
I mean, their yards are decent size. So five houses
away is a pretty good distance to be able to
pick up his nuclear reactor in his mom's potting shed
with his Geiger counter.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Big side yards there.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, lots of big side yards.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
No zero lot lines.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
No, no, no. Nothing like that. No, this is Golf Manor, man,
that we're talking about. So he took it apart and
he just kind of distributed the different parts to try
to drop the radioactivity levels in his mom's potting shed.
And he kind of went about his life after he
disassembled his reactor. He'd achieved his goal, but apparently he
(26:33):
had a penchant for stealing wheels and tires off of cars.
He admitted as much in an interview later on as
an adult. And he seems to have gotten caught doing
that by the police shortly after he disassembled his reactor.
And when the police called him, they said, we're going
to search your car. And he said, go ahead and
(26:55):
search my car, but do not open that toolbox. That
toolbox is highly radioactive.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Is that a good cliffhanger for a break?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I think so. Imagine the cops going, what?
Speaker 1 (27:07):
You're like, we've got to listen to ads before we
know what happens?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Mm-hmm. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
All right. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.
(27:36):
All right, so it's August, almost September, 1994. That reactor
is taken apart. I think he put the thorium in
a shoebox. The radium in the americium was in the
shed still, and the rest is in the trunk of
his car. He's just been pulled over, like you said,
because there was reports that he was stealing tires and wheels.
(28:01):
And he said, warning, that thing's radioactive. Don't open up
that toolbox. So they said, well, maybe we should. This
sounds like an IED to me, an improvised explosive device.
Why don't we call in the bomb squad to be safe?
Called in the bomb squad. They said this whole car
basically is radioactive. And all of a sudden, the federal
(28:21):
radiological emergency response plan is triggered. And the EPA and
the FBI and the NRC and the DOE are in
the state and local authorities are all like. trying to,
not trying to get this kid, but trying to figure
out what in the world is going on with this kid. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
He's 17 at the time still. And all of a
sudden these huge agencies are like swooping down on him
to figure out what's going on. The thing is, I
guess they didn't think to ask the right questions or
their imaginations just didn't go as far as they could have,
but they seem to have in this initial questioning, not
(29:01):
really have gotten any further than his car. And he
didn't offer up any information whatsoever about his actual nuclear
reaction experiments in his mom's potting shed. They didn't even
know there was a potting shed at his mom's house
at this point.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
That's really hard to believe.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yes, but that's the level of questioning that this kid
was subjected to. And I mean, in retrospect, you're like,
are you guys kidding? You didn't know about the potting
shed right off the bat? But if you're an FBI
agent or a Department of Energy agent and you're talking
to a 17-year-old kid, You're probably not going to assume
that because they have this stuff in a toolbox in
(29:38):
their car, they actually were successful. successfully creating nuclear chain
reactions in their mom's potting shed. I can kind of
commiserate with that.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Sure. You probably assume he just got it at radiation
or us.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Pretty much.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
So a few months later is when they finally got
an expert from the State Department of Public Health to
interview David more thoroughly, and that turned up the potting shed.
David's mom at this point had gathered most of the
radioactive stuff and gotten rid of it. I imagine not
(30:13):
in a very safe way at all. No. Probably just
went in the trash can.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
And they still found a lot of radiation at the
house in the materials there in the shed. Apparently there
was a vegetable can that had about 1,000 times the
normal background radiation.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
And so they called in federal authorities and they said, well,
your house is, well, the potting shed at least is
a super fun site.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah. They ended up spending 60 grand on a two,
three day operation between June 26th and 28th of 1995,
disassembling the potting shed. I think getting some of the
earth around it out of there, putting them in sealed
barrels with radioactive hazard symbols on it, and they send
it to the Great Salt Lake Desert, where they were
(31:01):
buried with other canisters of low-level radioactive waste. His mom's
potting shed is in the Great Salt Lake Desert, buried
with other radioactive material. That's kind of neat. The real stuff, though,
like you said, it ended up in the landfill nearby.
There was a quote from David that I saw where
(31:22):
he said, The authorities got the garbage and the garbage
got the good stuff in reference to what his mom
had thrown away. So, yeah, there's some lumps of americium
and radium sitting somewhere in the garbage pile outside of
Clinton Commerce Township.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And what's in like a thousand years, it'll be safe?
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Probably something like that.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I was just I don't know how long that would be.
I bet somebody knows.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Oh, they'll write in.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So David falls into depression after this. His high school
classmates were not kind to him, of course. They called
him Radioactive Boy. The EPA said, hi, we should, you know,
we can examine you and your body to see if
you're OK. He said, no, no, no, I don't want
(32:12):
anything to do with that. I'll be fine. He did
get that Eagle Scout badge. I think the scout leaders
were like, should we really do this? But they did.
They gave him that Eagle Scout badge. And no, apparently
the neighborhood, all those huge side yards came in handy
because no one in the neighborhood and no one at
(32:34):
the home or in his family apparently ever suffered from
any kind of radiation sickness.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That is so lucky.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Like that is really lucky for him and for everybody.
But no one got hurt. That's just mind boggling at
this point. He went on and joined the Navy a
couple of years later and he served for several years,
was honorably discharged and ironically served on the USS Enterprise,
which is a nuclear submarine. But he didn't work in
(33:04):
any capacity near the nuclear part of the submarine.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
I think he fully served his time in the Navy.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
He did. Yeah, he was honorably discharged. No, no, no.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
I think I think he was discharged from the Marines.
I think he like he fully served his time in
the Navy. Oh, I thought he was never discharged.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I thought they discharged you when your time was up, too.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
No, you just you're just done. Like a discharge means
it's time for you to go. And they're like, wait,
I got three more years. And they're like, no, it's
time for you to go.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
OK, I got you. All right. So, yes, in between
the Navy and the Marines, he went to college. and
started working on an associate's degree. Like you said, he
joined the Marines. He was honorably discharged. And his life
was just not going the way he wanted it to.
2007 found him unemployed. His mental illness had really kind
(33:55):
of kicked in. And toward the end of his life,
spoiler alert, he died at age 39. There was an
FBI report on him where somebody had been informing on
him that he was not using his meds, that he
was heavily using cocaine, and that he was acting really paranoid.
(34:16):
From what I can tell, based on the FBI documents,
it seems like the person informing on him seems concerned,
not like they're doing it out of any kind of
vengeful reason.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
But when the FBI showed up and interviewed him, again,
this is when he's in his 30s, he passed all
the inspection or queries that they gave him, questioning that
they gave him.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah. And there were, you know, there were other complaints
and reports with the police that, you know, he was
trying to do this again, that he had a small
reactor at his house. Another landlord, I think, said that
he had stolen some smoke detectors that they were missing
and they found them like, you know, torn apart, basically
(35:02):
near David's garage. But they never they never found any
kind of radiation. He said he hadn't done that kind
of stuff in a decade. And, you know, they went
and checked like where he was living and they never
found any evidence that he had at least started up
any more radioactive work. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Imagine during your FBI questioning. You're like, I haven't done
any nuclear reactions at home for like 10 years, man.
That's like that is a different chat. It's like a
whole lifetime.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Teenage stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah, exactly. The FBI documents also give just kind of
a sad note in 2010, which is where the FBI's
investigation of him as an adult left off. Based on
those complaints, they noted that he was in rehab after
being charged with a bunch of drug charges. So apparently
(35:49):
the cocaine use thing was true. That was 2010. Six
years later, like I said, he was dead at age 39. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
So in the media, of course, initially there were some
people that said that the radioactivity did him in, or
that was a factor at least. Very sadly, the report
came back that wasn't true, but he died from combined
effects of alcohol and fentanyl and Benadryl. And he suffered
(36:19):
from mental illness, just like his mom, I think, from
paranoid schizophrenia and depression. And it's just a very sad
end to a story of a kid who sounds like
he was really smart and just wanted to try and
do something really amazing, you know?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah. He was found dead in the bathroom at a
Walmart that he had gone shopping in the night he died.
And it is a sad end. I don't quite know
what to make of it, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Like, Same.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
It's if he was still alive. I don't know. I
think it would be a much different story somehow.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
But he did something. I don't know. Maybe it's the
story of somebody who was just so single minded. They
did something that most other people would have given up
on or never even attempted. And that's worth mentioning, you know.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, absolutely. And I try to look at other angles, too.
I just I never saw anything like nefarious, really.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
No, no. Either an FBI interview or a media interview.
The interviewer was like, I mean, were you thinking of
making a bomb or whatever? And they said they reported
like he seemed to just be like that never even
crossed my mind. Like, no, that's not at all what
I was doing. He was just obsessed with creating a
nuclear reaction. And he did it.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah. Well, thankfully, we don't have to end it on
that sad note because Livia found this other great story
of a kid named Taylor Wilson who got the Radioactive
Boy Scout book from his grandmother as an 11-year-old science
kid and operating under supervision and oversight and getting real
(37:56):
experts to help. actually became the youngest person to achieve
nuclear fusion at the age of 14.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, which is amazing. I mean, fusion's a whole new ballgame.
But yeah, 14.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
And works as a nuclear physicist as an adult.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, and is supposedly, according to The Guardian, a super
cool dude, too.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah, and directly inspired from David's story.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, and apparently his grandmother lived to regret it, again,
according to The Guardian.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Oh, really?
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, that's what The Guardian said. Because I guess his
grandmother was giving it to him as a cautionary tale,
and he was like, ooh, I want to try this myself.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Very interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Taylor Wilson's grandmother is the 11th person we need to
thank in this episode, Taylor Wilson being 10 and Donald
Erb being number 9. Right.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Nice work.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
If you want to know more about the nuclear or
radioactive Boy Scout David Hahn, there's a lot of stuff
out there, but you would be remiss in not reading
Ken Silverstein's article, at least if not his book, on
David Hunt. And while you're looking that up, we'll just
go ahead and do listener mail.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Alright, this is from Tiffany. Hey guys, thank you for
bringing back some vivid memories from my 8th grade reading class.
Too many decades ago to admit, but my reading teacher
was also the social studies teacher, and I guess that
explains why all of our reading lists included Animal Farm, Hiroshima,
All Quiet on the Western Front, and you know it,
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. To hammer home what we read,
(39:28):
he would incorporate details of the book into a little
imaginary coin toss he did each day to determine whether
the boys or girls got to go first and walk
to lunch in single file line. For the weeks we
discussed The Jungle, it would sound something like this. Today's
menu includes hot dogs. Call it in the air. Is
it the rusty nail or the severed finger?
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Hmm.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
What a great teacher. One day we noticed that half
the kids in the class had an edition of the
book that included this. And yes, I still remember it
decades later. Mary had a little lamb. And when she
saw it sicken, she sent it off to the packing town.
And now it's labeled chicken. I was really hoping you
(40:09):
guys had seen this so we could hear a recitation
during the podcast. But we just did it right there, Tiffany.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
That's great. Yeah, I didn't run across that.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I didn't either. That's a great ad.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, thanks a lot, Tiffany. That's a great email, and
we appreciate it big time. And hats off to your teacher,
the 13th person we need to thank in this episode.
You're number 12, Tiffany.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Can we thank Jerry?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Sure, why not? We'll go with 14. We could thank
ourselves and just bring it up to 16, a nice
even number.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Sweet 16.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
We're going to make it 17, because we want to
thank you for listening, and we want to thank you
in advance for getting in touch with us via email
at stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
All right, Chuck here winding it down with number 11.
We wanted to finish on an odd number because odd
things are weird. And this is the SYSK Gets Weird playlist.
The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout. What a great episode.
I hope you guys enjoy it. I enjoyed it listening
to it in QA the other day all over again.
So listen to it right now. The Story of the
(00:24):
Nuclear Boy Scout. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
and Jerry's here, too. And this is a good old-fashioned
barn burner of a Stuff You Should Know type topic. Woo!
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Whiz-bang!
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Chuck, somebody sent this in as a suggestion recently, I think, right?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, you know, I think you and I had both
been aware of this story, but we did get a
recent suggestion from David Parcher.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, David Parcher. I think just a couple of weeks
ago sent in this suggestion, and look at the timing.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah. Well, thank you, David. And we're going to talk
about another David. That is David Hahn, the nuclear Boy Scout. Yep.
And this is one of those where we owe a
huge debt to a single human because this story may
have just gone– Fairly unnoticed as a pretty localized local
newspaper item.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
If it hadn't have been found by a gentleman named
Ken Silverstein, who ended up writing a very large piece
in Harper's Magazine and then a book called The Radioactive
Boy Scout, colon, the true story of a boy in
his backyard nuclear reactor. So big thanks to Ken. A
lot of this came from your work.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, and shout out also to the journalists from the
Natural Resources News Service, which is this investigative journalist group
that just does a public good, like investigate stories and
then turn around and give them to news outlets. And
apparently that's how Ken came across the story and began
(02:09):
researching it. So there's two people that were responsible for it,
at least.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, and three, because we have to count David Hahn. Yeah.
the Michigan teenager who in the 90s managed to create
a nuclear reaction in the potting shed of his mom's house.
It is a story that is interesting and amazing, but
also very sad in its ending.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, and technically we should thank five people because it
took Patty and Ken Hahn to reproduce and create David Hahn.
So we're at five people now that we need to thank.
All right.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
So David was born October 1976. That's the year you
were born, right?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah. I was just a couple months older than him.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah. And look what this guy did.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
What have you ever done?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Thanks for that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You got to hit podcast. You're not sweating it.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh, I'm sweating.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
When he was a little, and we say this because
it very much figures into the end of David's story.
It's very sad. But his mother, Patty, was diagnosed with
depression and paranoid schizophrenia, was hospitalized through his early childhood
off and on, and she would eventually take her own
life in 1996.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, and that will play into the story later on.
But Patty remains a character throughout most of it. So
too does David's father, Ken, who we mentioned. He's person five,
we need to thank. Patty and Ken got divorced, I think,
when David was really little, like maybe a toddler. And
Ken ended up marrying a coworker, Person number six we
(03:44):
need to thank, Kathy Missig. Ken and Kathy were both
engineers at General Motors. This whole thing took place in
the suburbs of Detroit, specifically Clinton Township, Michigan, specifically later
on in a subdivision called Gulf Manor, as we'll see.
So David lives with Ken and Kathy, and then on
(04:05):
weekends he goes and stays with his mom, Patty, and
her boyfriend, person number seven who we need to thank,
Michael Palasek. And they're the ones I believe who lived
in Golf Manor. And under by all accounts, like David
lived a pretty normal childhood, just doing normal childhood things.
It wasn't until he was 10 that his life found
(04:28):
its purpose, which is pretty early if you think about
it for your life to find its purpose.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah. And by the way, if you live in Golf Manor,
hold your emails. We know you're in Commerce Township. Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Thank you for that. I think his dad lived in
Clinton Township. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It's probably like where I lived in New Jersey. It's
like all these old townships just run together. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's what it looked like on the map.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah. So the person we really need to thank.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
This is number eight, person eight.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Is like you mentioned, when Dave was 10 years old,
his step mom's father. So I guess his step grandfather,
if you count that as a thing. He was also
an engineer at GM. He gave little David a book
called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. And little David
was fascinated with science and chemistry, but in particular with
(05:18):
the stories of Mary and Pierre Curie and their radium discovery.
And the glow, I think the glow of that whole
thing really enthralled this young guy.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, this book was heavily illustrated and like the instructions
kind of looked, had the same look as like those
Ripley's Believe It or Not comic strips almost. Totally something
that would appeal to a kid that age or a
little older. You can find it online in its entirety
as a PDF. And I looked at the illustration and
don't really know what he saw. And it's actually black
(05:52):
and white. that glows to some lines coming off of
a beaker or whatever.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Imagination, my friend.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
For some reason, it enthralled him so much so that
within two years of receiving that book, he was devouring
his father's chemistry textbooks at age 12.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah. So he was, I mean, these were books that
were more advanced than his age. Clearly a smart guy.
At the age of 14, he apparently made nitroglycerin by himself,
which evidently isn't the hardest thing to do, but is
very dangerous to do. There are other stories like he
brought wanted to make his own fireworks at Boy Scout camp.
(06:29):
So he brought some powdered magnesium, ended up catching on
fire and ruined a tent. So what else? He tried
to develop a self tanning method that didn't work out right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
He overdosed on canthoxanthin, which I can't remember which one,
which episode that came up in. But it's a pigment
that turns your skin orange from the inside out. And
that's what he did. He was trying to come up
with a self-tanning method that didn't use any kind of
UV radiation.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah. No comment.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
But he was that kind of dude. He would just
turn up at like a scout meeting or something bright
orange and be like, yeah, too much canthoxanthin.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
So, yeah, he's exactly that kid. He's also the kind
of kid who essentially– destroys his bedroom because he's doing science.
The walls were wrecked. The carpet was stained. They had
to move the carpet out. Eventually, his dad was like, listen,
this is getting serious. You're destroying our home. You got
(07:30):
to move him to the basement, first of all. And
when we're not here, you can't be in here. either.
They took away equipment. They took away some chemicals. And finally,
they said, all right, this is out of hand. You
can't do this anymore. So he said, all right, I'll
do it like every divorced kid says, I'll do it
at the other parent's house.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
That's right. And so he did. He ended up setting
up a lab in his mom's potting shed in Golf
Manor in Commerce Township. And this is where the story
really starts to kind of take off. Because his dad
was getting really worried that his son was basically creating
(08:15):
and selling drugs. That's what he was doing with his
chemistry experiments. And so he and his stepmom would drop
in on the library when he was supposedly there to
see if he was there. They really did not trust
this fascination with chemistry anymore. Which I mean, I can
understand if your kid blows himself up a couple of times,
you're like, what are you doing exactly here?
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So I don't know if he knew that David went
and set up a lab in his mom's potting shed
or not. And just was like, it's fine as long
as it's out of my house. I'm not sure. I've
never seen that either way. But one thing that he
did do to try to be like, OK, I think
you're creating drugs. You're probably on them. You may or
may not be selling them. None of those seem to
(08:57):
be true from what I can tell. You need to
become an Eagle Scout. And he pushed his son to
become an Eagle Scout.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah. And that's exactly what he did, as we will
later find out. But when it came time for merit
badge selection, he said, I want the one that says
atomic energy. And the Scoutmaster said, I think he told
the writer of the book, no one had ever chosen
that before in the history of the troop.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
So it kind of reminds me of the Brian Cox
scene in Rushmore with Bill Murray when he says he's
one of the worst students we've got. I can just
picture Brian Cox saying that, that no one's ever tried
for this badge before. But it was a legit badge.
It's kind of funny that it existed. It's different now,
as we'll see. But yeah. In 1963, they introduced the
(09:46):
Atomic Energy Badge. It came with a pamphlet that they
created with the nuclear energy industry that turned out to
have a lot of really useful information, almost like a
starter kit. on how to like source radioactive elements in
the real world.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
And how to get your own reactor going.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah. One of the projects you could do was to
build your own Geiger counter. Like it was serious stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah. Maybe so legit that, like I said, the Boy
Scouts would eventually change that badge. I think probably because
of what happened with David in 2005, they replaced it
with the nuclear science badge. Yes.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So, but he's still working on the original, the atomic
energy badge from 1963, right?
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So he's just devouring this. He's having the best time.
He visits a hospital ward to learn about x-rays, which
is part of the merit badge certification. And, The thing
that really changed things, though, Chuck, is he decided just
these things the merit badge was having him do, like
one of the things was draw a diagram of a
(10:57):
fission reaction. Yeah. Or build a model of a nuclear reactor,
but a model, like a cardboard model, basically, or paper mache. Or?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Or I will create my own nuclear reactor in my
mom's potting shed. he decided he was so psyched about
atomic energy that he wanted to do it himself.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah. I mean, I guess you do the model and
you're like, hey, that wasn't so hard. Let me see
if I can do it for real. And he wanted
to build, and this shows that he was a kid.
I don't think this was to cause harm. He wanted
to build a neutron gun. And the way I, just
for my research, this is speculation, but it didn't seem
(11:42):
like he was like, I want to build a neutron
gun to try and blow up the city that I
live in.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
It seemed more like a kid who was really into
science and sci-fi and chemistry and wanted to make a
little pew-pew gun. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I think neutron gun is a misleading term. I can't
get the Nintendo duck hunt gun out of my head
whenever I hear neutron gun. But really what a neutron
gun is, at least the one that David made, it's
a block of lead with a cavity carved out and
you put radioactive material in the cavity and then cover
(12:18):
it over with like aluminum foil. And then you just
point the aluminum foil side of that block of lead
At what you want to irradiate and then you try
to start a chain reaction, a nuclear reaction. That seems
to be the sum total of his goals. He wasn't
trying to build a bomb. He wasn't trying to sell
plutonium to the Libyans. He wasn't doing anything like that.
(12:41):
He just wanted to see if he could start a
nuclear chain reaction, this thing that had fascinated him since
he was 10 years old. And so he set about
doing that with help from this Eagle Scout merit badge pamphlet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Which makes the whole thing that much more nuts.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah, and also by adopting a persona as a professor
because he starts writing into organizations trying to get information,
trying to get materials, trying to get schematics. He said
he was Professor Han that taught at his high school,
Chippewa Valley High School. Go chipmunks. Are they?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I don't know. They better be.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And over the next few years, basically— And apparently, you know,
he he applied himself. He didn't apply himself in school.
He was smart, but he was failing academically. almost failing out,
basically barely passing like the math and English exams needed
to graduate eventually. But that is to say these letters
had like spelling errors and grammatical errors. It didn't seem
(13:42):
like they were written by a professor, but people bought it.
And before you know it, he's like corresponding as a
professor to these adults.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah. And these adults are just totally into this correspondence.
They're really enjoying helping this, who they think a high
school physics teacher learn math, the stuff he's looking for
about nuclear energy to ostensibly go and teach to the kids. Right.
So this correspondence is like genuine. The only thing illegitimate
about it was that he was misrepresenting who he actually was.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
A professor rather than a high school student. But other
than that, everything else about it seems to be pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah. Except for the fact that it's dangerous and illegal. Yes.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
So one of the people that he corresponded with, I
think he corresponded with him the most, was named Donald Erb, E-R-B.
And he was the guy who was the head of
the department that produces isotopes. If you need isotopes, you
can go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This is not you,
but like if you are in some sort of industry
that uses isotopes. And this herb will be like, I
(14:45):
got you. I got you covered. For some reason, they
come in these little baggies with like card suits printed
all over them. It's weird. That's a herb kind of touch.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
It's so nice.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
But he worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and nobody
helped David Hahn more than Donald Erb did, again, unwittingly.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, absolutely. So should we take a break?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
We should.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Okay. All right. I was about to keep going, but
let's take a break, and we're going to talk about
his pursuit of radioactive materials right after this. Radioactive Materials.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
By the way, Chuck, it's the Chippewa Valley Big Red,
which appears to be a giant cardinal. Oh. If you
ask me, that was a missed opportunity.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Chipmunks?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Chippewa chipmunks, the rabid chipmunks.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, I love it. All right. So when we left off,
David Hahn was getting serious about building this nuclear reactor.
He needs material to do that. So and we should
point out that, you know, I said it was dangerous.
It was dangerous. He did know this. He still pursued it.
But he like he had a lead shield. That he
(16:19):
worked with. He threw away his contaminated clothes. He left
his shoes in there and didn't take them in his house.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
It was like his driving shoes, but in a potting
shed that he was building a breeder reactor in.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Do you have driving shoes? Is that a thing?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I know that it's a thing from watching old episodes
of Frasier.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I've never heard that.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yes, you've seen driving shoes. People wear them and they're
totally unaware that you're not supposed to wear them out
of your car. But it's like if your car is
so nice... You take off your outdoor shoes and put
on your driving shoes that never leave your car. And
that way you don't get your car dirty.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I don't know if I have seen them. I guess
I just maybe didn't.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
They look kind of like a cross between a loafer
and a moccasin. And then the dead giveaway is the
tread on the bottom comes up the back of the
heel as well because of the position that your foot
is in when you're driving. It gives you grip.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
All right. I'm going to have to look this up.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
You've seen them.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
All right. All right. So it's amazing. 52 years old.
Never knew about this.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I was only probably 40 when I learned about it.
So I don't feel bad.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
All right. So he starts looking for materials. And these
are just a few sort of stories about he would
go about that. He wanted some americium 241 for this
neutron gun. in the booklet that he got from the
Boy Scouts, said you can get this stuff in smoke detectors.
So he tries to steal them from the Boy Scout camp,
(17:51):
got caught and sent home early. Then he writes smoke
detector companies saying, I need a bunch of these things
for a school project. Eventually, one company sold him 100
broken ones for 100 bucks. Yeah. Couldn't figure out how
to find this americium. So got in touch with another
smoke detector company. It was like, oh, well, here's where
you find it. And was able to extract americium enough
(18:14):
to like weld together with a blowtorch. Yes.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
So remember I was talking about the neutron gun is
a lump of lead with a cavity hollowed out. And
then you put your radioactive material in the cavity of lead.
Now we have this radioactive material.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Amerisium is– I looked up why it would be in
smoke detectors. Did you see why? No. It's really interesting.
Just for a second. So amerisium, because of its radioactive decay,
it creates a flow of ions, positive and negative ions,
that are moved across like this metal plate. And there's
(18:51):
a constant movement of ions that this amerisium is creating
from the air around it. And when smoke interacts with
those ions, it actually breaks that flow. That flow is
detected by the smoke detector, which triggers it to go off.
Isn't that just so bizarre? That's how your smoke detector works.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
And that's how they still work?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's still americium in smoke detectors today.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Amazing. Yeah. So you said he built his own Geiger counter.
I don't know if it was this one or if
he ended up getting another one, but he would drive
around upper Michigan. with this Geiger counter on, just looking
for naturally occurring uranium out in the world. And then
eventually he's like, this isn't working out. So he got
(19:37):
a Czechoslovakian firm that the NRC told him about and
sourced uranium ore.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, he had that Geiger counter mounted to his dashboard.
And apparently any time he drove, he had it turned on.
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, I mean, you've got to find this stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And he actually did find some stuff. It's called pitch blend,
and it's a source of low-grade uranium. And he tried
to extract it, but he couldn't purify it enough. So
like you said, he was like, well, I'll just buy
some pure uranium from a firm in Czechoslovakia. that he
heard about either from the pamphlet or from Donald Erb,
one of the two.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, another thing he did was the little mantle, like
the little mesh sacks that you tie onto a gas lantern.
He bought thousands of those because they have little tiny
amounts of thorium-232. And so, you know, he buys thousands
of these from surplus stores, buys thousands of dollars in
(20:31):
lithium batteries to extract lithium. So he's being very... you know,
I think showing a lot of initiative in at least
how to find this stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, I mean, like, he's using his after-school job money
to buy $ 1, 000 in lithium batteries to purify the thorium
that he got from the gas lanterns that he purchased
and extracted it from. Like, I can't imagine how much
time and effort this took. And by the way, he
did purify that thorium pretty well. I saw that he
got it to 9,000 times the level found in Nature
(21:03):
of radioactivity. And about 170 times the level that you
would need a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to possess.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
He also went around, of course, where you're going to
find old dangerous radioactive things, junkyards and antique shops. So
he would take that Geiger counter into a junk shop
or an antique store and he would walk around until
something lit up like radium paint. If you remember, I
think it was pretty excellent podcast on the radium girls.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And he would find radium paint in an old clock.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah. Yeah, he found a vial of paint just tucked
away inside of one. Then he really had his radioactive
material for his neutron gun. He actually stepped it up
and built a second gun. He'd also, from corresponding with
Donald Erb, gotten even better at creating a neutron gun
that was going to be useful in creating a nuclear reaction.
(22:03):
He also found that when he used the radium on,
I think, the thorium that he purified, he was trying
to trigger a chain reaction by bombarding thorium with neutrons.
That's what he was trying to do. He found that
the thorium wasn't converting into uranium like it was supposed to.
So he contacted Donald Erb and Donald Erb said, your
(22:23):
neutrons are too fast. You got to slow them down.
One of the best ways to slow them down is tritium.
And he said, well, where would I find tritium? And
apparently they use tritium to make the glowing sites on
gun scopes and gun sights. So he ordered, I think,
dozens of gun sights from mail order catalogs from stores.
(22:44):
And then he would scrape the tritium off and then
send them back and say, I need this sight repaired.
There's no tritium on it. And they would put more
tritium on it and send it back. And he'd just
create a new pseudonym and send that back. And that's
how methodical that kid was.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So this is all kid stuff. He's like, 14, 15
years old. Eventually, he turns 17 and he says, all right,
I think I want to build an actual nuclear reactor.
It's called a tiny breeder reactor. They've been around since
the early 1950s when the U.S. developed them, when we
(23:18):
were sort of the beginning of the age of trying
to use nuclear power for electricity. Mm-hmm. And they're like, well,
these little tiny breeder reactors might be a good way
to extend the supply of fuel or something. It never
quite worked out that way. I think they're still working
on that kind of thing in Russia and China. But
it never really went off the ground. But it was
(23:38):
enough to inspire David to think that maybe I can
build a small thing like this in my mom's potting
garage or potting shed.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah. The difference between a breeder reactor and a regular
reactor is that in a regular reactor, you just use
fuel and you get energy from the fuel. With the
breeder reactor, you get energy from the fuel, but it
also creates more fuel, and you end up with more
fuel than you started with. I saw it likened to
leaving your house or the car with a half a
(24:08):
tank of gas, and when you return home, the tank
is full. That's kind of like what it does, and
yet they just could never get it to work. But
that's what he was trying to do. And the reason
why is because you start with uranium-238, and that's the
most abundant uranium found in nature.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
That's right. So he doesn't have enough uranium, no matter
what kind it is, to create an actual chain reaction
for a normal reactor. So he says, maybe I can
at least do something. It seemed like he became sort
of obsessed just with this goal of creating some kind
of nuclear reaction himself. Yeah, yeah. Got a blueprint from
(24:45):
one of his dad's textbooks, took that americium and the
radium from his neutron guns, mixed it with some aluminum shavings,
some beryllium, wrap that up in aluminum foil. And basically,
you have yourself a very small reactor core right there.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, he created an atomic pile like the first one
that Fermi created in Chicago, but on a much, much
smaller scale. But it worked. It worked. Like, it worked.
He created, like you said, a nuclear reactor, and it
started a nuclear chain reaction. And it started to take off, actually,
pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Yeah. He's got that Geiger counter, and he's measuring this thing, like,
on a daily basis. And he's like, it's actually growing. Like,
it's getting more radioactive in here. I imagine he was
thrilled and also possibly a little bit like Matthew Broderick
in War Games where it's like, oh, wait a minute. Like,
(25:40):
what have I done here such that he was worried
and took it apart?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
He did. Apparently, he could detect it from five houses
down the street. And I looked up pictures of Golf Manor. And,
I mean, their yards are decent size. So five houses
away is a pretty good distance to be able to
pick up his nuclear reactor in his mom's potting shed
with his Geiger counter.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Big side yards there.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, lots of big side yards.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
No zero lot lines.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
No, no, no. Nothing like that. No, this is Golf Manor, man,
that we're talking about. So he took it apart and
he just kind of distributed the different parts to try
to drop the radioactivity levels in his mom's potting shed.
And he kind of went about his life after he
disassembled his reactor. He'd achieved his goal, but apparently he
(26:33):
had a penchant for stealing wheels and tires off of cars.
He admitted as much in an interview later on as
an adult. And he seems to have gotten caught doing
that by the police shortly after he disassembled his reactor.
And when the police called him, they said, we're going
to search your car. And he said, go ahead and
(26:55):
search my car, but do not open that toolbox. That
toolbox is highly radioactive.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Is that a good cliffhanger for a break?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I think so. Imagine the cops going, what?
Speaker 1 (27:07):
You're like, we've got to listen to ads before we
know what happens?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Mm-hmm. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
All right. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.
(27:36):
All right, so it's August, almost September, 1994. That reactor
is taken apart. I think he put the thorium in
a shoebox. The radium in the americium was in the
shed still, and the rest is in the trunk of
his car. He's just been pulled over, like you said,
because there was reports that he was stealing tires and wheels.
(28:01):
And he said, warning, that thing's radioactive. Don't open up
that toolbox. So they said, well, maybe we should. This
sounds like an IED to me, an improvised explosive device.
Why don't we call in the bomb squad to be safe?
Called in the bomb squad. They said this whole car
basically is radioactive. And all of a sudden, the federal
(28:21):
radiological emergency response plan is triggered. And the EPA and
the FBI and the NRC and the DOE are in
the state and local authorities are all like. trying to,
not trying to get this kid, but trying to figure
out what in the world is going on with this kid. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
He's 17 at the time still. And all of a
sudden these huge agencies are like swooping down on him
to figure out what's going on. The thing is, I
guess they didn't think to ask the right questions or
their imaginations just didn't go as far as they could have,
but they seem to have in this initial questioning, not
(29:01):
really have gotten any further than his car. And he
didn't offer up any information whatsoever about his actual nuclear
reaction experiments in his mom's potting shed. They didn't even
know there was a potting shed at his mom's house
at this point.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
That's really hard to believe.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yes, but that's the level of questioning that this kid
was subjected to. And I mean, in retrospect, you're like,
are you guys kidding? You didn't know about the potting
shed right off the bat? But if you're an FBI
agent or a Department of Energy agent and you're talking
to a 17-year-old kid, You're probably not going to assume
that because they have this stuff in a toolbox in
(29:38):
their car, they actually were successful. successfully creating nuclear chain
reactions in their mom's potting shed. I can kind of
commiserate with that.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Sure. You probably assume he just got it at radiation
or us.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Pretty much.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
So a few months later is when they finally got
an expert from the State Department of Public Health to
interview David more thoroughly, and that turned up the potting shed.
David's mom at this point had gathered most of the
radioactive stuff and gotten rid of it. I imagine not
(30:13):
in a very safe way at all. No. Probably just
went in the trash can.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
And they still found a lot of radiation at the
house in the materials there in the shed. Apparently there
was a vegetable can that had about 1,000 times the
normal background radiation.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
And so they called in federal authorities and they said, well,
your house is, well, the potting shed at least is
a super fun site.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah. They ended up spending 60 grand on a two,
three day operation between June 26th and 28th of 1995,
disassembling the potting shed. I think getting some of the
earth around it out of there, putting them in sealed
barrels with radioactive hazard symbols on it, and they send
it to the Great Salt Lake Desert, where they were
(31:01):
buried with other canisters of low-level radioactive waste. His mom's
potting shed is in the Great Salt Lake Desert, buried
with other radioactive material. That's kind of neat. The real stuff, though,
like you said, it ended up in the landfill nearby.
There was a quote from David that I saw where
(31:22):
he said, The authorities got the garbage and the garbage
got the good stuff in reference to what his mom
had thrown away. So, yeah, there's some lumps of americium
and radium sitting somewhere in the garbage pile outside of
Clinton Commerce Township.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And what's in like a thousand years, it'll be safe?
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Probably something like that.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I was just I don't know how long that would be.
I bet somebody knows.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Oh, they'll write in.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So David falls into depression after this. His high school
classmates were not kind to him, of course. They called
him Radioactive Boy. The EPA said, hi, we should, you know,
we can examine you and your body to see if
you're OK. He said, no, no, no, I don't want
(32:12):
anything to do with that. I'll be fine. He did
get that Eagle Scout badge. I think the scout leaders
were like, should we really do this? But they did.
They gave him that Eagle Scout badge. And no, apparently
the neighborhood, all those huge side yards came in handy
because no one in the neighborhood and no one at
(32:34):
the home or in his family apparently ever suffered from
any kind of radiation sickness.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That is so lucky.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Like that is really lucky for him and for everybody.
But no one got hurt. That's just mind boggling at
this point. He went on and joined the Navy a
couple of years later and he served for several years,
was honorably discharged and ironically served on the USS Enterprise,
which is a nuclear submarine. But he didn't work in
(33:04):
any capacity near the nuclear part of the submarine.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
I think he fully served his time in the Navy.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
He did. Yeah, he was honorably discharged. No, no, no.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
I think I think he was discharged from the Marines.
I think he like he fully served his time in
the Navy. Oh, I thought he was never discharged.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I thought they discharged you when your time was up, too.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
No, you just you're just done. Like a discharge means
it's time for you to go. And they're like, wait,
I got three more years. And they're like, no, it's
time for you to go.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
OK, I got you. All right. So, yes, in between
the Navy and the Marines, he went to college. and
started working on an associate's degree. Like you said, he
joined the Marines. He was honorably discharged. And his life
was just not going the way he wanted it to.
2007 found him unemployed. His mental illness had really kind
(33:55):
of kicked in. And toward the end of his life,
spoiler alert, he died at age 39. There was an
FBI report on him where somebody had been informing on
him that he was not using his meds, that he
was heavily using cocaine, and that he was acting really paranoid.
(34:16):
From what I can tell, based on the FBI documents,
it seems like the person informing on him seems concerned,
not like they're doing it out of any kind of
vengeful reason.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
But when the FBI showed up and interviewed him, again,
this is when he's in his 30s, he passed all
the inspection or queries that they gave him, questioning that
they gave him.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah. And there were, you know, there were other complaints
and reports with the police that, you know, he was
trying to do this again, that he had a small
reactor at his house. Another landlord, I think, said that
he had stolen some smoke detectors that they were missing
and they found them like, you know, torn apart, basically
(35:02):
near David's garage. But they never they never found any
kind of radiation. He said he hadn't done that kind
of stuff in a decade. And, you know, they went
and checked like where he was living and they never
found any evidence that he had at least started up
any more radioactive work. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Imagine during your FBI questioning. You're like, I haven't done
any nuclear reactions at home for like 10 years, man.
That's like that is a different chat. It's like a
whole lifetime.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Teenage stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah, exactly. The FBI documents also give just kind of
a sad note in 2010, which is where the FBI's
investigation of him as an adult left off. Based on
those complaints, they noted that he was in rehab after
being charged with a bunch of drug charges. So apparently
(35:49):
the cocaine use thing was true. That was 2010. Six
years later, like I said, he was dead at age 39. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
So in the media, of course, initially there were some
people that said that the radioactivity did him in, or
that was a factor at least. Very sadly, the report
came back that wasn't true, but he died from combined
effects of alcohol and fentanyl and Benadryl. And he suffered
(36:19):
from mental illness, just like his mom, I think, from
paranoid schizophrenia and depression. And it's just a very sad
end to a story of a kid who sounds like
he was really smart and just wanted to try and
do something really amazing, you know?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah. He was found dead in the bathroom at a
Walmart that he had gone shopping in the night he died.
And it is a sad end. I don't quite know
what to make of it, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Like, Same.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
It's if he was still alive. I don't know. I
think it would be a much different story somehow.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
But he did something. I don't know. Maybe it's the
story of somebody who was just so single minded. They
did something that most other people would have given up
on or never even attempted. And that's worth mentioning, you know.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, absolutely. And I try to look at other angles, too.
I just I never saw anything like nefarious, really.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
No, no. Either an FBI interview or a media interview.
The interviewer was like, I mean, were you thinking of
making a bomb or whatever? And they said they reported
like he seemed to just be like that never even
crossed my mind. Like, no, that's not at all what
I was doing. He was just obsessed with creating a
nuclear reaction. And he did it.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah. Well, thankfully, we don't have to end it on
that sad note because Livia found this other great story
of a kid named Taylor Wilson who got the Radioactive
Boy Scout book from his grandmother as an 11-year-old science
kid and operating under supervision and oversight and getting real
(37:56):
experts to help. actually became the youngest person to achieve
nuclear fusion at the age of 14.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, which is amazing. I mean, fusion's a whole new ballgame.
But yeah, 14.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
And works as a nuclear physicist as an adult.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, and is supposedly, according to The Guardian, a super
cool dude, too.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah, and directly inspired from David's story.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, and apparently his grandmother lived to regret it, again,
according to The Guardian.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Oh, really?
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, that's what The Guardian said. Because I guess his
grandmother was giving it to him as a cautionary tale,
and he was like, ooh, I want to try this myself.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Very interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Taylor Wilson's grandmother is the 11th person we need to
thank in this episode, Taylor Wilson being 10 and Donald
Erb being number 9. Right.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Nice work.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
If you want to know more about the nuclear or
radioactive Boy Scout David Hahn, there's a lot of stuff
out there, but you would be remiss in not reading
Ken Silverstein's article, at least if not his book, on
David Hunt. And while you're looking that up, we'll just
go ahead and do listener mail.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Alright, this is from Tiffany. Hey guys, thank you for
bringing back some vivid memories from my 8th grade reading class.
Too many decades ago to admit, but my reading teacher
was also the social studies teacher, and I guess that
explains why all of our reading lists included Animal Farm, Hiroshima,
All Quiet on the Western Front, and you know it,
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. To hammer home what we read,
(39:28):
he would incorporate details of the book into a little
imaginary coin toss he did each day to determine whether
the boys or girls got to go first and walk
to lunch in single file line. For the weeks we
discussed The Jungle, it would sound something like this. Today's
menu includes hot dogs. Call it in the air. Is
it the rusty nail or the severed finger?
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Hmm.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
What a great teacher. One day we noticed that half
the kids in the class had an edition of the
book that included this. And yes, I still remember it
decades later. Mary had a little lamb. And when she
saw it sicken, she sent it off to the packing town.
And now it's labeled chicken. I was really hoping you
(40:09):
guys had seen this so we could hear a recitation
during the podcast. But we just did it right there, Tiffany.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
That's great. Yeah, I didn't run across that.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I didn't either. That's a great ad.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, thanks a lot, Tiffany. That's a great email, and
we appreciate it big time. And hats off to your teacher,
the 13th person we need to thank in this episode.
You're number 12, Tiffany.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Can we thank Jerry?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Sure, why not? We'll go with 14. We could thank
ourselves and just bring it up to 16, a nice
even number.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Sweet 16.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
We're going to make it 17, because we want to
thank you for listening, and we want to thank you
in advance for getting in touch with us via email
at stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.