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0:54

Fate has ordained that the men who went

0:56

to the moon to explore in peace will

0:59

stay on the moon to rest in

1:01

peace. These brave

1:03

men, Neil Armstrong

1:05

and Edwin Aldrin, know

1:08

that there is no hope for their recovery.

1:11

But they also know that there is

1:13

hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

1:17

These two men are laying down their

1:19

lives in mankind's most noble goal, the

1:22

search for truth and understanding.

1:25

They will be mourned by their families and friends. They

1:28

will be mourned by their nation. They

1:31

will be mourned by the people of the world. They

1:34

will be mourned by a Mother Earth that

1:36

dared send two of her sons into the

1:38

unknown. In ancient days,

1:41

men looked at stars and saw

1:43

their heroes in the constellations. In

1:46

modern times, we do much the

1:48

same, but our heroes are

1:51

epic men of flesh and

1:53

blood. Others will

1:56

follow And surely find their way

1:58

home. Search

2:00

will not be denied. But.

2:02

These men were the first.

2:05

And. They will remain the foremost

2:07

in our hearts. For.

2:09

Every human being who looks up at the

2:12

moon in the knights to come. Will.

2:14

Know that there is some corner.

2:17

Of another world. That.

2:19

Is for ever. mankind.

2:22

So. That dominic with your hero president.

2:26

At all. Rather, it was Richard Nixon

2:28

as he would have been. Had

2:31

the Apollo Eleven mission gone wrong?

2:34

Had. The. Not landed or had

2:36

it been unable to take off. Just had

2:38

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin been left stranded

2:40

on the main before. See? that never happened.

2:42

But I think of all the I'm. Of

2:45

all the things that been written about. The.

2:47

Median Things That is the one that haunts

2:49

me more than anything because it really brings

2:51

home the jeopardy. The. The

2:53

credible sense of danger that accompanied a

2:56

mission that it's not so much part

2:58

of our imagination. the we just take

3:00

hits success for granted. they will be

3:03

completed. Some of us will. I will

3:05

say tremendous. I'm asset I target didn't

3:07

I felt it was slightly wavering at

3:09

times. Fast as we will discover. We

3:12

won't give it away right? Subway boats.

3:14

You were under tremendous pressure that I

3:16

was. I mean because there is a

3:19

a Californian. Listening. To this

3:21

yahoo yet as as may be toppled a

3:23

little bit an amateur dramatics himself as an

3:25

actor acting himself exactly see did well under

3:27

tremendous pressure. To be honest dominic it was

3:30

Rich Nixon talking about the search for treason

3:32

Understanding that as me want to have club

3:34

a surprise guest guest So it is an

3:36

extraordinary thing is that when you look when

3:38

you think that the twentieth century when of

3:41

course be remembered in the long run. For.

3:44

Technology for the World Wars for

3:46

the terrible depths of man's inhumanity to

3:48

man by the won't great signing

3:50

lights. I. Would say. Is.

3:53

The sense that. mankind.

3:56

Was pushing the frontiers.

3:59

of technological eggs and that that moment

4:01

when man lands on the moon is

4:04

the supreme symbol I think in the

4:06

20th century of You

4:08

know the conquest of frontiers that would

4:10

once have seemed Absolutely impossible

4:12

and the sheer symbolism that you

4:15

think of that moment when Neil

4:17

Armstrong steps onto the roof and you're absolutely right

4:19

I think to emphasize the jeopardy

4:21

which is something we so often Overlook

4:24

now you and I are too young aren't we

4:26

I mean I wasn't even born well I'm not

4:28

actually you're too young to remember it though. Yeah,

4:30

I'm definitely too young to remember it But the

4:32

good news is we have a guest today who

4:35

does remember it now Tom. We are a patriotic

4:37

podcast So pains me given

4:40

our history with the French This

4:42

is our first guest who is a Chevalier

4:44

of the les gendons would you believe that

4:47

we have on the show? Yeah Yeah

4:50

on the positive side. He is a

4:52

fan of Aston Villa Well, it's not

4:54

all bad two pretty deep black marks

4:56

there Tom But I'm prepared to overlook

4:58

them because it is our first

5:00

guest to have won not one But

5:03

two Academy Awards for best actor in

5:05

successive years. It is of course Top

5:09

historian Tom Hanks Tom welcome to the

5:11

show. Thank you. By the way Tom

5:13

Holland a dead ringer as Richard. Thank

5:15

you without a

5:18

doubt If you could say such

5:20

things like I am NOT a crook and

5:24

You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around

5:26

anymore. Those were two of his other quotes

5:29

I'll feel like I'm sitting in the same room

5:31

Wow that you were too kind that is you

5:33

were sorry I thought that is very kind that

5:35

is so generous. That is a beautiful It's

5:38

odd to say but a

5:40

missed opportunity for some magnificent

5:43

Poeticizing in that speech that did

5:45

not have to be given in

5:48

that it really does encapsulate the risk

5:50

and the danger in in the 50-51 shot

5:52

only Opportunity

5:55

that Apollo 11 had yeah

5:58

and Apollo 12 had in order to land

6:00

on the moon. And it only took, it

6:03

took less than a year

6:06

for the opposite to happen.

6:08

On Apollo 13, that odd

6:10

thing occurred, a bad valve,

6:12

a misread test result, improperly

6:15

interpreted reading, what

6:17

have you, had it happened

6:19

at any other point in the voyage

6:21

to the moon, would have taken the

6:23

lives of all three astronauts that were on

6:25

board Apollo 11. Jim Lovell,

6:27

Chex Weicker, and Fred Hayes. And, Tom, that

6:29

is a mission that is associated with you.

6:32

I played, I was in the movie,

6:34

I played Jim Lovell, I talked to

6:37

all of those guys and did a

6:39

deep, deep, deep dive into that other

6:41

aspect of exploration was what happens when

6:44

something goes wrong, terribly wrong, and

6:46

what does it take in order

6:48

to avoid the disaster that really would

6:50

have defined, I think, the Apollo moon

6:53

message, the American space race, and perhaps

6:55

going to the moon. And just to

6:57

ask, before we start looking at the

6:59

history of how man ends up on

7:01

the moon, what's your kind

7:03

of personal sense of it? It goes

7:05

back to childhood, doesn't it? You were kind of playing

7:07

games in swimming pools and things. Tom Hanks Yeah, I'm

7:09

67 years old. I was born in 1956. And

7:13

my school days dovetailed

7:16

perfectly with the story

7:18

of the decade, and as Dominic

7:20

said, really of the 20th century.

7:23

We were going to go to

7:25

the moon. Human beings were

7:27

going to walk on the moon as

7:30

early as 1962. The

7:34

question was when and who and

7:37

how fast and which nation would

7:39

it be the Soviet Union who

7:41

seemed to be light years ahead

7:43

of us in their secrecy and

7:45

in their accomplishments? Or would it

7:48

be the very open and public

7:50

and very expensive American space program?

7:52

So from John Glenn, or actually

7:54

Alan Shepard, in the early 1960s,

7:56

I was in second, third, fourth,

7:58

fifth, sixth grade. So, I was

8:00

13 in July of 1969. And

8:06

the only thing I was paying attention to,

8:09

outside of maybe some

8:11

girls, was the run-up

8:14

to landing on the moon, which began

8:16

really in earnest in the, I

8:18

think, in the zeitgeist of Box Populi starting in

8:20

1968 when Apollo

8:23

8 went to the moon and

8:25

broadcast live from lunar orbit on

8:27

television. And we saw that very

8:29

particular vision of ourselves on

8:32

the planet Earth in the distance,

8:34

in black and white, but yet there

8:36

we were. But seeing it on television,

8:38

I was sitting in my mom's house

8:40

in Red Bluff, California, thinking

8:43

that history just cracked wide open.

8:46

Something had happened that had never happened before. And so

8:48

now it was just, we had

8:50

to complete the task. And when would

8:52

that happen? There were two more missions

8:54

that when tested equipment and one

8:56

flew to the moon again, Apollo 10,

8:59

they did not land. And

9:01

it wasn't until that July where it was going to

9:03

happen. And it was a countdown. It

9:05

was a, every

9:08

day that ticked by, every week,

9:10

every headline was sort

9:12

of like written, all of the disciplines that

9:14

I was studying, certainly it was current events,

9:17

you know, the news of the day. But

9:19

it was also science. It was

9:21

also physics. Lift plus thrust is equal

9:24

to load plus drag. It

9:26

was engineering. It was mathematics of how do

9:28

you build these rockets and how do you

9:30

put three guys into it? And

9:32

how do you, what does it take in

9:34

order to build something that can land on

9:37

the moon? It was science and technology because

9:39

they had amazing computers that

9:42

would help divine, you know, how to

9:44

get there. Computers in the primitive

9:46

sense. Your average calculator that you

9:48

get for free on one of your apps

9:50

on your phone now has more memory than

9:52

everything that had on Apollo. And then there

9:54

was also a degree of artistry to it

9:56

because I can't tell you enough of how

9:59

much the combined presence of

10:01

2001 as Space Odyssey, the

10:03

motion picture, as well

10:05

as the poetry of Archibald MacLeish and

10:07

the ongoing science fiction

10:10

writing of anybody from Robert

10:12

Heinlein to Arthur

10:14

C. Clarke. This was all

10:16

enmeshed in this world of

10:18

before we land on

10:21

the moon. I was very cognizant

10:23

of that great, I

10:26

overused the imagery of

10:28

Rubicon that was crossed by

10:30

humankind on one side of

10:33

the lunar river one day,

10:35

and then the next day we

10:37

had crossed over to the other side.

10:39

All of humankind now were spacefaring, planetary

10:41

visiting. And Tom, can I

10:44

ask you, so you said you were born in

10:46

1956, obviously the following year, I think it is,

10:48

is the year that the Russians launched Sputnik,

10:50

which is a great shock for

10:53

Eisenhower's America. How much were you

10:55

growing up conscious of the fact that the space

10:57

race was being driven by that

10:59

kind of Cold War competition with an

11:01

ideological adversary? Or was that not really

11:03

on ordinary people's radar, would you say?

11:05

No, it was us versus them. Turns

11:07

out the threat of Sputnik was really

11:09

just they'd been able to do it.

11:11

Everybody was like, oh, now they can

11:13

drop rockets on us. No, they couldn't.

11:16

Yeah, Sputnik was essentially a grapefruit sized

11:18

ball that was going beat, beat, beat.

11:20

But the fact that they were able

11:22

to do it in the first place

11:24

was what kind of like kicked America's ass for

11:27

a while. How can they can do it when

11:29

we can? Then, of course, Yuri Gagarin goes up

11:31

and it orbits the moon. And it seemed as

11:33

though the Russians were building spaceships when

11:35

Americans were kind of like sending up versions

11:38

of toasters to see if they could work

11:40

in outer space instead. Yeah. But it was,

11:42

it was with it was a competition, pure

11:45

and simple. Us versus

11:47

them. And it was always

11:50

in the perspective of they're beating us. We

11:52

are losing. We're in second place because it

11:54

was so secretive. Yeah, of course. Because Khrushchev

11:56

kind of openly gloats, doesn't he, when he

11:59

congratulates? Gagarin and he kind of

12:01

saying let the capitalists catch up with us.

12:03

They'll never beat us. And then

12:05

of course, John F. Kennedy picks

12:07

up the gauntlet. And since

12:09

you were thrilled by my first impression of

12:11

an American president, let me So you asked

12:13

for this, Tom, you opened the door for

12:15

them. All right. Let's hear it. So this

12:17

is September the 12th, 1962.

12:19

And JFK gives a speech at Reiser University in Houston,

12:22

where of course, you know, mission control is now all

12:24

that kind of thing to 40,000 people. And

12:26

he commits the United States to landing a man on

12:28

the moon by the end of the decade. So he

12:30

is providing a kind of a deadline. But

12:33

why some say the moon, why choose

12:35

this as our goal? And

12:37

they may well ask why to climb the highest

12:40

mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why

12:44

does Rice play Texas? We

12:46

choose to go to the moon. We

12:49

choose to go to the moon in

12:51

this decade and do the other things.

12:53

Not because they are easy,

12:56

but because they are hard. What do

12:58

you think of that? So what people

13:00

who are listening to this can't

13:03

see is that actually Tom Hanks is in tears.

13:05

And I mean, it's such a stirring

13:07

speech. And I hope that I haven't

13:10

completely destroyed

13:17

any sense of the drama of it with

13:19

that. But it is. You can screw up

13:21

that text, you know, though the words live.

13:24

Right. Even the worst actor you're saying. But

13:26

it's an amazing commitment because failure

13:29

in that mission will be so

13:31

public. It's about as bold a

13:33

statement as was ever to

13:35

be made, I think, by any

13:37

politician. Yeah. Now, later on in

13:39

the famous speech to Congress, he

13:41

says, I believe that we should

13:43

dedicate ourself before this decade is

13:46

out of sending a man onto

13:48

the moon and returning him safely

13:50

to the earth. Between

13:52

that and what he said in the stadium

13:54

at Rice University, and that is why does

13:56

Rice play Texas? That was a great ad lib that

13:58

he put in there for for the local

14:01

crowd. It really does state

14:03

something much more than a political will, but

14:06

sort of like the purpose and definition of

14:08

humankind. Why would we try something

14:10

like that? You

14:12

can take that into account by why

14:14

go across those mountains in primitive

14:17

man when all you can do is walk? Why

14:19

go from here to there when it's on the other side

14:21

of that body of water? Why

14:24

do anything that is going to risk

14:27

your life, cost a lot of

14:29

money, maybe have absolutely no

14:31

value at the end of the

14:33

day? Why go off and explore

14:35

or try anything new? Because it

14:37

is the human condition, not

14:40

because it is easy, but because it is hard.

14:42

It goes on and speaks about the test that

14:44

is going to make of all of ourselves, of

14:46

the people that are involved in that.

14:48

They are going to have to just figure

14:51

things out with

14:53

no guarantee of success, in

14:55

fact, a 50-50 chance of

14:58

absolute public failure. And

15:00

here is the thing that I

15:03

think comes down to what backed

15:05

up his ability to say such

15:07

a thing, is there is a

15:09

ton of people that want to do exactly that, that

15:12

don't view themselves as being fully

15:14

alive without trying the

15:16

impossible, without attempting to figure out

15:19

what has never been attempted. It

15:21

is part of the human condition. For

15:23

some people to leave the

15:26

campfire and go outside the cave and

15:28

see what's on the other side of

15:30

the valley. And in this case, I mean, my

15:32

God, I mean, here we have been looking up

15:35

at this thing that has

15:37

been above us in different shapes and forms,

15:39

more or less every single night of our

15:41

existence. And depending on when we get up

15:44

at night, sometimes the mood is there, shining

15:46

down on us, sometimes it's just barely

15:49

showing up. And it is this

15:51

huge, big, circular, crescent, gibbous-based source

15:53

of light and perspective that can

15:56

really, with only a few minutes,

15:58

it's pondering, produce nothing but questions.

16:01

What's up there? Can I go

16:03

there? Why is it there? How

16:05

did it get there? What does

16:08

it mean? I mean, what

16:10

does the moon mean? How does it

16:12

affect us? I mean, you

16:15

know, I think it's interesting that crazy

16:18

people were often called lunatics.

16:21

You know, you went to a lunatic

16:23

asylum. I've spoken to people in the

16:25

psychiatric industry. They said, hey, what's the

16:27

deal with the full moon? Does it

16:29

really make people go crazy? And they

16:31

said, why do you think they call

16:33

them lunatics? Because even periodically that moon

16:35

comes out and we all get a

16:37

little bit hairy. We all turn into

16:40

some version of werewolves.

16:42

Yeah. And it's as certain as the tides

16:44

being pulled, you know, on bodies of

16:46

water. So there's this thing that exists

16:49

up there for some kind

16:51

of reason. And as John

16:53

F. Kennedy says, you know, we choose

16:56

to go to the moon and do the

16:58

other things, not because they are easy, but

17:00

because they are hard. They're going to be

17:02

a test of ourselves and why we're here

17:04

on the planet earth in the first place.

17:06

Now, it's not far, I don't think, in

17:08

order to take that and say, well, why

17:10

try to figure out what bacteria is? Why

17:12

not try to, you know, conquer viruses? Why

17:14

not try to do any of the other

17:16

things? Because they're not going to be easy.

17:18

Yeah, they are going to be hard. But

17:20

at the same time, it's a problem that

17:22

we are a problem solving race.

17:25

We like these mysteries and tasks.

17:27

They said something interesting there about

17:29

some, you know, Kennedy's pledge, his

17:32

figure, his optimism tapping something in the human

17:34

spirit. But now that you look back, do

17:37

you think that the 60s, I mean, Kennedy obviously

17:39

talks about the new frontier and all that kind

17:41

of thing. Do you think that the 60s that

17:43

that was a peculiar moment, the

17:46

kind of technological optimism can do

17:48

spirit, obviously, the economy is doing

17:50

really well. You know, the United

17:52

States is really keen to Flex

17:54

its muscles, I guess, you know, I'm not

17:56

talking about militarily, although there is a military

17:58

dimension to it. You. Know there's

18:01

a real sense of dynamism their

18:03

than the whole new frontier thing, conquering

18:05

frontiers that are busy. Now from

18:07

their perspective the twenty twenties. We.

18:09

Kind of don't have pets the same degree do

18:11

with a much more pessimistic, much more introverted, But

18:14

you think there was something unique about that spirit

18:16

so that climate in which you were growing up.

18:19

Of. Kind of can do. They got dynamism

18:21

motor that kind of thing. Without.

18:23

A doubt the Nineteen sixties were

18:25

this time when the newness of

18:28

so much of our technological abilities

18:30

as human beings. Was. Probably

18:32

on display in a much more

18:34

vigorous kind of way. On

18:37

gotta say somewhere between the advent

18:39

of television. Through. To

18:41

the Nineteen seventies may be when

18:43

we could have the Vhs machine

18:45

and record everything. Had suddenly all

18:48

this stuff was possible. That had

18:50

been the stuff of science fiction

18:52

for generation upon generation. Even like

18:54

my Dad. I. Parents could only get

18:56

across the country really at the speed

18:58

of a railroad. And. If they

19:00

were going to make a telephone

19:02

call, your voice had to get

19:05

there along or whatever electrons cassette

19:07

onto a copper wire. And

19:09

all of those barriers.

19:11

Disappeared. In the nineteen sixties,

19:14

just communications and general went nuts.

19:16

Yeah, and also I'm in our

19:18

own individual lives. You

19:20

know is an incredible, credibly important. Invention

19:22

and a kid of about it widely in

19:25

the nineteen sixties was air condition. Is.

19:27

Suddenly youth, You could live in parts

19:30

of the world that we're inhospitable. I

19:32

have searched. I'll just swipe. That's why

19:34

can be done. It is that you

19:36

since A swap for guidance, a decent

19:38

Murphy. a humid swap with bugs and

19:41

spiders the size of your head. Yeah,

19:43

ah. an air conditioned comes along and

19:45

suddenly you. We are able to live

19:47

our daily lives in this type of

19:50

comfort. And he's. for the

19:52

first time in human in all of

19:54

human history. So along with that I

19:56

think. Stirred. this

19:58

catalyst of will what as possible?

20:01

What else can we do? What else is

20:03

fun? What else is going to be entertaining?

20:05

And what else can we do at nighttime

20:07

when we're home done with our

20:10

jobs? But also then,

20:12

what else is going to be able

20:14

to move us from here and there?

20:16

And what else is going to be

20:18

technologically imaginatively possible? It's seen there for a

20:21

while that if you could imagine it, you could

20:23

make it happen in the 1960s. That has just

20:25

sped so fast that now we

20:28

don't even think twice about all the things that

20:30

are possible. And Tom, I should mention, I

20:32

mean, this is a thought that was, you know, it

20:34

struck me very, very powerfully when I went to a

20:37

show that you narrate moonwalkers in King's Cross

20:39

here in London, where we are, which is

20:41

it's on at the moment, it's on, I

20:43

think, till the 13th of October, 2024. And

20:47

in that you narrate the story of all the various

20:49

Apollo missions. And one of the

20:51

things that leaps out from that is how

20:54

short the distance of time is between

20:56

utter disaster and utter triumph. So Apollo

20:58

one, I mean, three

21:01

astronauts die horribly burnt to death

21:04

in their tin can, as David Bowie would

21:06

put it. And they weren't even meant to

21:08

fly. They were just doing tests on the

21:10

ground. Yeah. And something went so hideously wrong

21:13

that they were incinerated to death and it

21:16

could not get out of, they couldn't even

21:18

open the door to the space capsule. Because

21:20

that seems a terror. I mean, Apollo one,

21:23

they die so horribly, the technology

21:25

seems dodgy. And yet the

21:28

speed with which the missions are being

21:30

sent up. So we already talked about

21:32

Apollo eight with moonrise and dim level

21:34

up there and everything. And then Apollo

21:36

10, dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11

21:38

lunar landing, which is some, it's called

21:40

Snoopy, isn't it? The one that goes

21:42

down. Well, yeah. But okay, listen, listen,

21:44

listen, can we take a moment just

21:46

to examine Apollo 10? Sure.

21:48

Yeah. What Charlie Brown and Snoopy was a

21:50

command module in the lunar module. Apollo eight

21:52

had gone around the moon and at Christmas

21:54

with three guys in it. It was just

21:56

them just to see if the math worked

21:59

That Apollo eight. It was kind of like

22:01

if we can throw this hammer far enough. Hard.

22:03

Enough little go around the moon and come back right?

22:06

And. They did end up tell you

22:08

this little side story of is Charles

22:10

Lindbergh. Visited the crew of

22:12

Apollo Eight just before they were about

22:15

to launch and they said to him

22:17

you know, are you going to come

22:19

back in July for the Apollo Eleven

22:21

because our oh really be history because

22:23

are gonna land on the moon And

22:25

Charles Lindbergh said know you guys are

22:27

making the most important flight in Jamaica.

22:30

You guys are leaving the gravitational pull

22:32

of the planet earth that's never been

22:34

done before. If. You guys can

22:36

do that. All the rest of the

22:38

stuff is nuts and bolts about that.

22:40

Yeah, so they listed Apollo ten. Thomas.

22:43

Stafford who is the commander

22:45

and Gene Cernan. Gene.

22:47

Cernan. Is. In.

22:50

Snoopy, The

22:52

at lunar module that cannot land

22:54

on the moon but separates him

22:56

lunar orbit goes around a bunch

22:59

of times, does a bunch of

23:01

tests, separates into words to the

23:03

senses so. I've. And

23:05

and I've I've asked Gene Cernan is

23:07

how in the world. View. Go

23:09

all the way to the moon. Fly.

23:13

Just a few dozen miles above it's

23:15

surface and willingly give up on the

23:17

idea of landing right and coming back

23:19

home. A man you are so you

23:21

are. So see her and yet you're

23:23

not allowed to park and going to

23:25

Disneyland. You can only drive by and

23:27

look at it. Is that why they

23:29

called it Charlie Brown says they never

23:31

got there? No actually the reason I

23:34

call the Charlie Brown because it was

23:36

the first time they were going to

23:38

have. Two different spacecraft that they

23:40

had to talk to individually. Oh I

23:42

see, so they needed name. So when

23:44

they said hey Charlie Brown that meant

23:46

the Command Module they said hey Snoopy

23:48

That meant the Lunar Module right? So

23:50

somebody has sought solace or these astronauts

23:52

and of as you play the astronauts

23:54

and he narrated films Mademoiselle? Not so

23:57

for is there a census. Does

24:00

the camaraderie trump everything? Are they just so proud

24:02

and privileged to be doing the jobs that they

24:04

are? Or is there a sense of, I don't

24:06

know, maybe jealousy is too strong, but rivalry? Because

24:10

the guy who gets to be the first guy on the

24:12

moon, I mean, that is a very privileged position. So in

24:14

other words, do the people on Apollo 10 think, yeah,

24:16

this is all very well, but I wish I was on Apollo 11. Or

24:19

does that not come into it? They are perhaps

24:22

the most competitive group of

24:24

people I've ever come across.

24:26

Oh, really? They are

24:28

all convinced, rightly so, that they

24:30

are the most accomplished if anybody is

24:32

there. They do give each other great

24:35

respect for what they have accomplished, but

24:37

they don't necessarily get along. They

24:40

don't necessarily have to like each other without

24:43

a doubt. It is a class, and

24:45

by class I mean a group of

24:47

people who are all studying and competing

24:49

for the same honors, right? And

24:52

inside that comes every one of the

24:54

human feelings that is part of the

24:56

human condition. But what they

24:59

also are, they are members of an

25:01

extremely exclusive club that

25:03

is a meritocracy. You have to

25:05

be smart. You have to be

25:07

accomplished. And you have to withstand

25:09

any number of intellectual and physical

25:11

rigors to be a part of

25:13

it. So I have found

25:15

them all to be a source of,

25:18

if you can get them away from

25:20

what's the word on board, you know,

25:22

anybody who accepts a check from the

25:24

federal government runs the risk of saying

25:26

something so improper or whatever.

25:28

So there's an awful lot of pressure

25:31

on them to always say and

25:33

be and do the right thing. I'll

25:36

take that into account because I understand that what

25:38

goes along with it. But just like, I don't

25:40

know, it's kind of like when you

25:42

get a chance to have a real conversation with one

25:44

of the Rolling Stones, you know. Hey, Bill Wyman, I

25:46

got some questions for you about what it was like

25:48

being a part of the Rolling Stones. Yeah. Hey,

25:51

Charlie, Charlie Watts, you got to watch the

25:53

back of those. What do you think? They

25:56

all have a very, very, very individual story

25:58

to tell about what they saw. and

26:00

what they went through. And it is

26:02

singular. It is for them and them alone.

26:05

You know, Tom and Dominic,

26:07

you talk about what would have

26:09

happened if Neil and Buzz, on

26:11

Apollo 11, had died going

26:13

down to the surface or not able to

26:15

get off the surface. Let's imagine their corpses

26:18

are in the sea of tranquility for the

26:20

rest of time, okay? Do you

26:22

know what Michael Collins had to do? Michael

26:25

Collins was the astronaut in the command module.

26:28

He was there to take them home. You

26:30

know, he had to drill and

26:33

practice and come up with the

26:35

plan in order to fly home

26:38

by himself. And that was

26:40

not just a theoretical thing written on

26:42

paper. He had to run those simulations

26:44

himself. Now, you hear that. And it's

26:46

like, okay, I think it's great that

26:48

Neil and Buzz got to work. I

26:50

have some questions from Michael Collins, I'd

26:52

like to ask, about what he went

26:54

through. It's almost as though

26:56

let's not discount the expertise of those

26:58

men simply because they didn't get to

27:00

go down and get their boots dirty.

27:02

But also, I mean, imagine Alder and

27:05

Armstrong know that Michael Collins has been

27:07

preparing for that. Michael Collins knows

27:09

it. I mean, such courage. And just to

27:11

go back to the letter that we opened

27:13

with, they're getting in a tin can. They

27:16

don't know it's going to work. So we should

27:18

we should probably take a break. But before we do that,

27:20

let's get man on the

27:22

moon. So let's follow Neil Armstrong

27:24

and Buzz Aldrin as they are

27:26

coming down to the surface of

27:28

the moon in the eagle. As preparation

27:30

for this, I rewatch the Ryan Gosling film

27:32

First Man and they do it brilliantly. And

27:35

they think kind of music kind of incredible

27:37

tension. Yeah. And I was prompted then to

27:39

go and read a book that you read

27:41

the introduction for Andrew Chaikin's A Man on

27:43

the Moon, The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts.

27:46

Because I hadn't read until

27:48

I saw that film, but they almost

27:50

land in a crater, don't they? Yeah.

27:52

And Neil Armstrong has to kind

27:54

of take over. He kind of goes,

27:56

he says, pretty rocky

27:59

area here. he said. Yeah.

28:01

Understating the area. Yeah. Pretty

28:04

rocky area here. Well, yeah, yeah. On the moon.

28:07

And the NASA tracking guy is saying

28:09

it was like watching a man, some

28:11

kind of snake charmer, put his hand

28:13

on a cobra. Anything can happen any

28:15

minute and probably will. I mean, I

28:17

cannot imagine the tension there must have

28:19

been at that moment. There was also

28:21

the fact that the visuals of landing

28:23

there, because there is no atmosphere, there

28:25

is no sense of depth perception. It's

28:27

very hard to determine how big that

28:29

rock actually is. Is it the size of a

28:31

house? The size of a car? Is it the size

28:33

of a toaster? How big is that rock? Because

28:36

the lack of an atmosphere means everything

28:39

is crystal clear. Everything is as sharp

28:41

as focus as there is. Outside

28:44

of the analog radar, they had a

28:46

very primitive version of radar. Not much

28:48

better than had it existed since World

28:51

War II. The best

28:53

guide they had was the fact they had

28:55

the shadow of their lunar module. They had

28:57

the shadow of the eagle. And

29:00

the math that went into them landing

29:03

meant that their lunar module

29:05

had to be coming into a

29:07

landing with the sun directly behind

29:09

them. So that this little shadow

29:11

that finally shows up in the distance is

29:13

them. And they just match it

29:16

up for where they are until the shadows.

29:19

And it's not until about 20 feet

29:22

above the surface that the

29:24

dust of the moon starts kicking up

29:27

and Buzz Aldrum says, picking up a

29:29

little dust, that means they

29:31

are that close. So a shadow

29:33

and some dust is the only thing that tells

29:35

them how close they are to the surface. I

29:38

can't get past those kind of details. Yeah. Should

29:41

we take a break now? And when we come back,

29:43

we'll let the listeners know whether the eagle manages to

29:45

land or not. Yeah, let's find out because I'm anxious

29:47

to know. Okay. Take a few minutes. Bye

29:50

bye. Welcome

29:57

back to the Restless History. We are still

29:59

here with Tom. Hanks, talking about moonwalkers,

30:01

the men who walked on the moon.

30:04

So we're on July the 20th, 1969.

30:07

A young Tom Hanks

30:09

is watching in awe

30:11

in California. I think that's right, isn't it? You're

30:13

watching at home. Yeah. Slught your TV like so

30:16

many people. And they've been

30:18

gone for four days. They have 30 seconds

30:20

of fuel left in the reserves. The

30:22

tension is mounting. The world is watching. And

30:26

Neil Armstrong brings the lunar module

30:28

down and he cuts the engines

30:30

and he says, the

30:32

eagle has landed. And the show

30:35

at the Lightroom, the Unirate, so

30:37

Tom mentioned it earlier in the first half

30:39

at King's Cross, you

30:41

get a sense of this almost

30:44

ecstatic joy and

30:46

relief in the control

30:48

room when they realize they're down, they've

30:50

made it. And the next thing is

30:53

actually getting a human being down the

30:55

steps and onto the surface of the

30:57

moon. And am I right in saying

30:59

that before they do that, Buzz

31:03

Aldrin has some bread

31:05

and wine and he wants to have

31:07

a religious moment. Is that right?

31:10

Yeah. He was about

31:12

Catholic and the interesting

31:14

personalities of all of

31:16

these crews, I think, comes out in

31:18

Apollo 11 because I don't think he

31:20

could have two individuals that are more

31:22

different than Neil Armstrong was from Buzz

31:24

Aldrin. And you chuck Michael Collins in

31:26

there and you have, honestly. I'm

31:29

not sure those guys would have volunteered to

31:32

drive to the beach together had

31:35

they not been assigned to it. But he

31:37

did do it. And I think it's actually

31:40

very beautiful, particularly for a man of

31:42

any type of face. And it does

31:44

put that other sort of context into

31:47

the endeavor. Now, NASA, I don't think

31:49

was ever wild about there being any

31:51

religiosity brought to anything in the program.

31:53

In fact, when Apollo 8

31:55

read from the book of Genesis on

31:58

their television broadcast. There was all

32:00

sorts of, you know, any number of public comments of the

32:03

bike. This is the last thing we need. But it was,

32:05

I think what Buzz did

32:07

there was he said, this is a

32:09

personal moment that I am experiencing. So

32:12

therefore, I am going to note it

32:14

in a very, very personal way. And

32:16

one way or the other, in an

32:18

awful lot of the conversations I've had,

32:20

I haven't spoken to every one of

32:22

them, men who walked on the moon. But

32:25

they all do some version of that, that is

32:27

just a moment for themselves. But of course, for

32:30

people watching on television, the key

32:32

moment is when Neil Armstrong actually

32:34

steps onto the moon.

32:37

And he slightly fluffs his

32:39

great line, doesn't he? Did you as an

32:41

actor ever talk to him about that? There's

32:45

all sorts of fabulous, you know,

32:47

old wives tales or legends about

32:49

what it is. And if he

32:51

had said that's one small step

32:54

for a man, one

32:56

giant leap for all mankind, that

32:58

might have been better.

33:01

But for my view, it's one small

33:03

step for man, a giant

33:05

leap for mankind. There is

33:07

a rule, I think, when it comes down to

33:10

literature is to get rid of any word that

33:12

you do not need. I

33:14

think that he just truncated it

33:16

perfectly. And maybe he was

33:19

a little excited. Maybe his heart rate was

33:21

a little large, because I think

33:24

what he did not say, and

33:26

I've heard fabulous jokes about this

33:28

from various comedic outlets, what he

33:30

did not say is, holy cow,

33:32

I'm stepping on the moon. Oh

33:35

my God, I can't friggin' believe

33:37

this. I'm standing on the goddamn, you

33:39

know, he didn't say that. So

33:41

I think it ends up being as beautiful

33:44

as anything that Shakespeare or Sophocles

33:46

or Confucius or late

33:49

Zao has ever said, that you can't

33:51

go much better than a giant leap

33:53

for mankind. And just to

33:55

get back to the competitive thing that you talked about in

33:57

the first half. Yeah? Buzz Aldrin. wanted

34:00

to be the first man on the moon, did he not?

34:02

And is it not right that when they said, listen,

34:05

it's going to be Neil, that he's like, you

34:07

know what, I think it actually should be me?

34:09

Well, every single man who was in the astronaut

34:11

corps wanted to be the first man to set

34:14

foot on the moon. Al Shepard wanted it to

34:16

be Fred Hayes, wanted it to be Pete Conrad,

34:18

wanted it to be, and actually he had a

34:20

shot because if someone had gone wrong with 11,

34:23

he would have made the first landing on 12. But

34:26

there had been this hierarchy when it

34:28

came down to who gets out of

34:30

the spacecraft. On Jiminy, for the

34:32

first spacewalks of Ed White and Gene

34:35

Cernan, and Michael Collins made a spacewalk

34:37

on Jiminy with two guys.

34:39

The commander stayed inside the craft piloting

34:41

it and the pilot, the other guy,

34:43

essentially popped the hatch and got out

34:46

first. That's the way

34:48

it had always been in Jiminy and they would

34:50

have assumed, you would have assumed, that that would

34:52

be the case also when it came down to

34:54

landing on the moon. Now, is it

34:56

an odd detail

34:58

of spacecraft design that

35:01

the hinges of the

35:03

door, of the hatch, of

35:05

the lunar module made it impossible

35:08

for the guy standing on the

35:10

right hand side to get out

35:13

first and instead the commander

35:15

of the mission, the guy who actually made

35:17

the landing. I don't know that we will

35:19

ever know if it was that or it

35:22

could have been. I have no

35:25

detail that says this was the case. I

35:27

wouldn't be surprised if when

35:29

it came down to that decision and the

35:31

design of the hatch itself that somebody,

35:34

maybe it was Deke Slayton, maybe it was

35:36

Chris Kraft, I don't believe anybody is going

35:39

to be the commander of the first landings

35:41

on the moon who's going to say, no,

35:43

let the other guy get out. I'm the

35:45

commander. I'm getting out. I

35:48

just landed. So,

35:50

leave it to that. So, is it because

35:52

of the design of it or is it

35:54

because of some greater discussion? The record, I

35:56

think, will probably go to show that Let's

35:59

just call it the day. Orbited a disappointment.

36:02

That Buzz Aldrin was not the first. What I

36:04

mean who doesn't want to be the first man

36:06

to walk on here at It was a T

36:08

said had made with himself and it took a

36:10

long time probably true for him to make their

36:12

Neil Armstrong was the best. Pilot was A I

36:14

think and and and the entire space program. I mean

36:16

he had that reputation. will not have to ask

36:18

all the other pilots. Yes,

36:21

know or that made it will come of a

36:23

delay less diverse for you know v the time.

36:25

As he says a sense yeah this a sense

36:27

says that he's the kind of guy he would

36:29

wants to be the first man to walk on

36:31

the moon. he was a civilian. About that

36:33

he was the only civilian. everybody

36:35

else. yeah, maybe not jackson that,

36:37

but everybody else had been commissioned

36:39

officers. In the Navy as

36:41

as aviator or the air for the alliance

36:44

from was not but he was gonna play.

36:46

The. First guy he walks on the moon is obviously get

36:48

a in as he makes it back. He is going

36:50

to be in the eye of of of the global

36:52

media and he will be the rest of his life

36:54

and so I guess you would want someone he could

36:57

carry that off with dignity. And. The alarm

36:59

some of his. He did that

37:01

tremendously. He certainly did an act.

37:03

I will say this that came

37:06

about because everything went according to

37:08

plan. Plans. It had

37:10

shifted as early as December of

37:12

Nineteen Sixty Eight, when they decided

37:14

to. Bypass. The

37:17

schedule of tests and missions. If

37:19

for example, anything had gone wrong,

37:21

Ah, On even on Apollo ten. And

37:24

for even if Apollo Ten had not lived

37:26

up to Idsa specifications, Apollo Eleven would have

37:29

been a different sort of mission and would

37:31

have been blocked. And. Apollo

37:33

Twelve could very easily have been

37:35

the first mission to the moon

37:37

or. Somebody. else could

37:39

have done something else there would have

37:41

slated around so it's an interesting question

37:44

of what was a guaranteed that neil

37:46

and buzz and my collins we're going

37:48

to be the mission that landed first

37:51

on the moon cause even our shepherd

37:53

some apollo fourteen they were originally gonna

37:55

be apollo thirteen but that got slid

37:57

for any number of reasons so a

38:00

period of time where the schedule is in

38:02

flux. But they make it back. They do.

38:05

And they lived up to that second important

38:07

part. Land a man

38:09

on the moon and return them

38:12

safely to the Earth. Let's

38:14

look at just the physics of that. Okay.

38:18

All right. They have landed on the moon. They

38:20

have to ascend back up into

38:22

orbit around the moon. There's a

38:24

lot of math involved in that. There's a

38:26

lot of technology. Meaning that rocket has to

38:29

work perfectly, that rocket engine. All those valves

38:31

and all the pressure and all the mixture

38:33

and all the glycols and all that kind

38:35

of stuff has to work perfectly. The

38:37

command module has to be in the right place.

38:40

And it's got to hook up. They've

38:42

got to be able to get back

38:44

together, stow everything in. They throw away

38:47

that ascent station. Then they have to

38:49

line up perfectly and come home to

38:51

Earth. And how many shots do

38:53

they have at that? They have

38:55

one single shot. They essentially

38:57

come back from the moon on

38:59

a close line, straight through,

39:02

going, I don't even, you guys might be able

39:05

to tell. How fast is the spacecraft going as

39:07

it comes back to Earth? It's under like 55,000

39:09

miles an hour. Dominic,

39:12

you got those numbers for us? I don't

39:14

happen immediately to hand them. Okay.

39:17

All right. That was very mean.

39:19

But it's going, it's thousands and thousands

39:21

of miles per hour, right? Because the

39:24

gravitational pull of the Earth is pulling

39:26

them even faster and faster and faster.

39:29

And then they have to survive that

39:31

fiery thing. And then the parachutes all

39:33

have to work and they can't drown in the middle

39:35

of the Pacific Ocean and all this stuff. So can

39:37

I ask you, so Apollo 11 succeeds and then Apollo

39:40

12 and men land on the moon and come back

39:42

and it's all brilliant. But of

39:44

course, Apollo 13 famously, things go wrong.

39:47

And everything that you've been talking about is essentially

39:49

what the character that you play in that film

39:51

has to deal with. I

39:54

assume that having played Jim

39:56

Lovell, it gave you a much

39:58

sharper sense of everything. that

40:00

was at stake not just in Apollo 13

40:02

but in all the missions. The question that

40:05

I think everybody asks, and I

40:07

might have asked Jim himself, hey,

40:09

how scared were you? You know? And

40:12

the truth is, no more scared than any

40:14

other time they'd gone up in an airplane

40:16

and figured out, oh, something could go wrong

40:18

when I'm up here. On Apollo 13, the

40:20

crew knew exactly what they were going to

40:22

have to do. They were going to have

40:25

to treat the lunar module Aquarius as a

40:27

lifeboat. That was the engine that they had.

40:29

And that was a contingency to a degree.

40:31

And after that, I said, well,

40:34

did you ever have those kind of moments

40:36

where you were just sitting there thinking, we're

40:38

screwed? And he said, no, because there was

40:41

always something to do. He described it as

40:43

a long, long game of solitaire. You

40:46

could always go three cards and see,

40:48

three cards and see nothing, three cards. Oh, no,

40:51

I can do this here. We need to do

40:53

that here. There was a thing with the taking

40:55

the O2 out of the atmosphere. There

40:58

was always something they could do. Fred Hayes,

41:01

played by Bill Paxton, the late

41:03

Bill Paxton, good friend. He

41:05

said, you know, sometimes the only thing

41:08

to do was just to switch over

41:10

to the forward Omni radio antenna, because

41:12

they were spinning around in space. And so they

41:14

always had to have the antenna turned on that

41:16

was pointing at the earth. Sometimes

41:18

he said, that's all I had to do. But

41:21

you know, that gave me something to do every two and

41:23

a half minutes. So that was

41:25

something that was something like that. So

41:28

getting getting to that aspect where they

41:30

are always in play.

41:35

And as long as they had a step that

41:37

they had to take, they realized that

41:39

there was a chance that they were going

41:41

to make it back. The bigger thing, I

41:44

think that I certainly get from Jim Lovell,

41:46

and he said this, he said, anytime you

41:48

go up in an airplane, you

41:50

cheat death, human beings aren't meant to fly. But

41:53

we just figured out how to do this. Human beings

41:55

aren't supposed to go up into outer space. And by

41:57

the way, when he flew on Apollo 13. He

42:00

was the most traveled man in the

42:02

history of humankind. He had been in

42:04

space more often. He had been in space longer.

42:06

He had gone farther than anybody else up to

42:09

that point because that was his second flight to

42:11

the moon because he'd been on a call away.

42:14

I really got from him the tactile understanding

42:16

that at the end of the day, it's

42:18

flesh and blood and brains that make all

42:20

of this stuff possible. And

42:22

we always had our brains and our flesh

42:24

and blood was still intact. That's

42:27

all they needed in order to have faith

42:29

in themselves. Faith in themselves, I think, is

42:31

the great divisive part between people that

42:33

achieve things and those who

42:36

don't even try. It's the difference between us and

42:38

rival history podcasts, isn't it, Tom? Exactly right. I'd

42:40

like to think so. So when

42:42

you talk about Jim Lovell and

42:44

you talk about how well-traveled he was, I mean, that's

42:47

an extraordinary thought, isn't it? He's the most well-traveled man

42:49

in human history to that point. And

42:52

you get a sense of the awesome scale

42:55

of their achievements and the sense of possibility. I

42:57

mean, they are doing this year after

42:59

year, multiple times a year sometimes. So Apollo 13

43:01

is what, 1970? And

43:03

then you have 14, 15, 16, 17. And

43:07

they're playing golf on the moon. Well, yeah. Apollo

43:10

15, they have a lunar rover. They

43:12

have effectively a car on the moon.

43:14

A fold-up electric car. Now, how about

43:17

that? Someone said, hey, you know, it'd

43:19

be great if we could see

43:21

a little bit more on the moon and help

43:23

these guys. How can we get a car up

43:25

there? And someone says, I know. Let's build one

43:28

that folds up. Right. And

43:30

so you'll just have to pull this little

43:32

cord, and it'll pop open up on the

43:34

moon. I have four wheels and all

43:36

the stuff. And they can drive as far as they

43:39

want to. The guys,

43:41

they were called the J mission. Right. Excuse

43:43

me, 15, 16, and 17. Not

43:47

only did they have this electric car,

43:49

but they were going to spend three

43:51

working days out on the moon. Neil

43:54

and Buzz were on the lunar surface

43:56

for about two hours. That's it.

43:58

And by the way, the Soviet. Union had they had

44:01

they been the first to land on the moon

44:03

They wouldn't have even been able to walk more

44:05

than a few yards from their spacecraft because they

44:07

would have been connected by an umbilical Court, it's

44:09

that's they would have picked up some rocks, right?

44:11

They would have picked up some rocks and does

44:14

planted a flag You know the hammer and the

44:16

sickle and they would have done a

44:18

couple of other things and then it would have

44:20

got back and they Would and they would have

44:22

come home their plan was not necessarily to explore

44:25

the moon So the alien buzzer

44:27

out for one spacewalk about two

44:30

hours Pete Conrad and Al

44:32

Bean they did two spacewalks on

44:34

Apollo 12 spent the night and

44:37

then and then took up by the way also

44:39

made a pinpoint landing as they landed right next

44:41

to a Surveyor probe. Yeah,

44:43

Apollo 13 didn't make it Apollo 14

44:46

did what Apollo 13 was going to do and what they

44:48

wanted to do Was go to a different

44:50

sort of geological formation on the moon

44:52

to see the difference between the rocks

44:55

More they were in the Frau Mora Highlands then

44:57

along comes 15 16 and 17 It's

45:00

like go as far as you can find as

45:02

much as this stuff and land in the most

45:04

difficult places and let's find out What

45:07

is there? Every

45:09

time they did that every

45:11

one of those missions tested some

45:14

new aspect of What

45:16

it takes for human beings to go into outer

45:18

space and prove that either worked or

45:20

did not work And I think I think

45:23

they all found, you know, a surprisingly great

45:25

amount of leeway I'll tell you this but

45:28

let's just take ponder their pressure suits

45:30

the lunar a leva suits lunar

45:33

excursion Suits and they

45:35

had the pressure suits. They worked

45:37

perfectly the worst thing that happened

45:39

was on Apollo 14 the

45:42

water hose got crimped and

45:45

The astronaut was not able

45:47

to replenish himself with liquids

45:50

while he was out on the moon for

45:52

seven hours Oh then here's a very interesting

45:54

detail and I'd like to let's not discount

45:57

that I was in the lunar specialment receiving

45:59

laboratory where they still have

46:01

the rocks from the moon, geological samples

46:03

from the moon, that have not been

46:06

touched, they have not been examined, I

46:08

mean most of them have been, but

46:10

underneath gloves inside a vacuum-packed seal in

46:13

an airtight antiseptic atmosphere, I was able

46:15

to hold the packages that had moon

46:17

rock cinnamon. The geologist that was there

46:19

said to me something fascinating. He said,

46:22

you know, 90% of

46:25

what we know about lunar geology

46:27

came from the rocks that

46:30

Neil Armstrong picked up. On

46:32

Apollo 11, Neil picked up

46:34

the lunar specimens. Buzz

46:36

laid out the scientific packages.

46:40

So 90% of our understanding,

46:42

our education of geological origins

46:45

and makeup of stuff in

46:47

the moon, came from the

46:49

rocks that Neil Armstrong picked up in his

46:51

two hours. So you've got to think then,

46:53

lower all those missions for,

46:56

to find out what was possible, to

46:58

find out the limits of

47:01

how far one could go, and

47:03

to find out the other specifications that

47:05

is going to be the template for

47:07

how anybody goes into outer space. Yeah.

47:10

And you talk about them bringing stuff back like the lunar rocks,

47:12

but they also left things there, didn't they? Oh,

47:15

yeah. So there's a lovely story. I remember

47:17

it from the Lightroom show that you did. Charlie

47:20

Duke, he leaves a photo,

47:22

doesn't he, with an inscription

47:24

with his family's fingerprints. And the

47:26

inscription on the photo says, this

47:28

is the family of astronaut Charlie Duke from

47:30

planet Earth, who landed on the moon on

47:32

April the 20th, 1972. I

47:35

actually found that the most, because I'm

47:37

sentimental, I found that the most kind

47:39

of poignant bit of the whole exhibition.

47:41

This photo, which now has been bleached

47:43

by the sun, so. By the sun,

47:45

yeah. So like the flags as well

47:47

have been bleached. Yeah, on one side

47:49

of that photograph is probably just a

47:52

white blotch, but on the

47:54

other side, that has been sitting in darkness

47:57

since 1972. the

48:00

names and the thumbprints of his family.

48:02

So let's imagine that we're long gone

48:04

and somebody else comes along to the

48:07

moon. What do they notice? There's plenty

48:09

of flags. There's a number of books.

48:11

There's a Bible was left

48:13

on the lunar rover. Plenty of scribbles

48:16

of initials probably are here and

48:18

there. There's that sculpture of the

48:20

fallen astronaut that Dave Scott left

48:23

because by that time human lives

48:25

had been lost in the space

48:27

program. And that was representative

48:29

of them. Everybody, you know, if

48:31

you want to go on the

48:33

internet, you'll be able to see

48:35

that there's an entire market for

48:38

lunar Apollo memorabilia, everything from patches

48:40

that had been flown, you know,

48:42

stowed away and flown to and from the moon.

48:45

Autographs signed, flight plans, this and

48:47

that. That stuff is all scattered

48:49

about. And I don't know that

48:51

everybody is willing to talk

48:53

about this stuff that they took up with

48:56

them and they brought back. And I think

48:58

there's a lot of very personal mementos that

49:01

the 12 moonwalkers took

49:04

up with them and brought back and

49:06

gave off as very, very special gifts

49:08

and historic ones. Because I

49:11

mean, imagine if you could come back

49:13

with, you know, a fork from Columbus's

49:15

original. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, you

49:17

might want to say this fork was,

49:19

you know, was used on Magellan's,

49:21

you know, trip around the

49:24

world. That would be a very unique fork. So,

49:26

Tommy, you said 12 men walk on

49:28

the moon and the

49:30

Apollo missions end in 1972. So no

49:33

human has set foot on the moon

49:35

since then. Could we end,

49:37

I mean, I know this is a history podcast,

49:39

but just ask you to look into the future

49:41

and what your hopes would be for

49:44

the future of human

49:47

space travel and perhaps going to the

49:49

moon and perhaps who knows going to

49:51

Mars. I found out recently that even

49:54

just for the next 12 month

49:56

period, I think there's something like

49:58

24 different enterprises. prices

50:01

that are going to go back to the moon. 24

50:04

different entities are going to land

50:06

something there, plant something there, figure

50:09

out how to put a probe down a

50:11

robot, whatever. And it just happened, what, like

50:13

a week and a half ago. Somebody

50:16

landed on the moon and thing fell over.

50:18

So it's now laying on its side. So

50:21

I want to say the desire to

50:23

go back, but I also would say

50:25

the need for us to return to

50:27

the moon is as present now as

50:29

it was to get there in the

50:31

first place. It is still

50:34

there and it holds opportunity. Sure.

50:37

Someone is, you know, I just read the other

50:39

day that somebody is going to try to go

50:41

up and put a robotic tractor up there that

50:43

is going to try to harvest the helium-3 isotope.

50:45

You guys can have a whole podcast about the

50:48

potential for helium-3 isotope. Oh, we love that. Dominik

50:50

talks of little else. I have to play. Wouldn't

50:52

that be fast? Anyway, book that

50:55

show and then just get ready

50:57

for record-setting listeners coming in. I

51:00

don't want to miss that helium-3 podcast. On

51:02

the rest is history. You got to get that. The

51:06

opportunities go out there. It

51:08

exists. But what you really

51:11

are going to be coming around

51:13

to, that same sense of humanity,

51:15

the same human need to continue

51:17

along the track of what's

51:19

up there. And so do you think it

51:21

matters that it would be humans rather than,

51:23

say, robots? I mean, is it something about

51:25

it being flesh and blood that

51:28

matters for scientific

51:30

reasons or perhaps imaginative reasons, making

51:32

a statement? Because that's what's so

51:34

moving about. Yeah, the physical constraints

51:36

on human beings. Yeah. Makes

51:39

it more impressive than the flesh and blood. Yeah.

51:42

It will be both. It's not either

51:44

or. Because human beings

51:47

will not accept either or. No

51:49

human beings, they can't do something. And

51:51

then see how big the line is for the people who

51:53

said, don't tell me what I can't do. You know? Now,

51:56

well, human beings walk on the

51:59

moon funded by government. governments and

52:01

by popular will,

52:04

or by votes of Congress

52:06

or Parliament or whatever, maybe not.

52:09

What we have learned from the Apollo missions

52:11

is literally how to do it. And

52:14

how to do it does not necessarily have the

52:16

need for huge massive space consortiums in order to

52:18

do it. I mean, a husband and wife with

52:20

the right amount of money and the right amount

52:23

of smarts and enough land could probably

52:25

do it themselves right now if they set out

52:27

in order to do it. The technology is there.

52:29

The physics is understood. The

52:32

composites, the building materials, the computers,

52:34

all that stuff is right there.

52:36

The question will always still be

52:38

to what purpose. It certainly isn't

52:40

just to go back. And

52:42

we did it. And here I am and

52:45

now I'm going to come back and I'll be,

52:47

you know, I'll have my own podcast for the

52:49

rest of time because I'm the guy right back

52:51

to the moon. The Artemis mission, you know, that's

52:53

going to probably go up and circumnavigate, fly around

52:56

the moon sometime next year. That's

52:58

going to be literally the first footstep towards

53:00

some brand of recovery if all the

53:02

funding and everything holds out like that. But

53:04

even without that, there are folks

53:07

out there, maybe they're only eight years

53:09

old or maybe, you know, maybe there's

53:11

somebody, you know, who's 67 like I

53:13

am. It's going

53:15

to say, I'm not going to miss out on

53:17

the opportunity to go back and restart or to

53:19

take up again the mantle of what those first

53:22

12 human beings did. It's

53:24

time for us to, it's time for

53:26

us to go back. We have never

53:28

let a single piece of

53:30

our planet earth remain unexplored. I

53:33

mean, there's people who live in Antarctica, you

53:35

know, because there's stuff to figure out there.

53:38

We've never done that. And we're not going to

53:40

do that with something as close as our nearest

53:43

celestial neighbor either. Because once we get

53:45

up there, we say, well, why do it? Because it's

53:47

just going to be the next step towards

53:49

whatever is beyond. And you know,

53:51

I love the scientific, the science fiction aspects of it.

53:53

And then we'll go to Mars and we'll figure out

53:56

that and then we'll go on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

53:58

yeah, yeah. We'll do all that. great.

54:00

Somebody else is going to take that on.

54:02

But let's talk about who really actually is

54:04

going to go off and do

54:06

it for the reasons that human beings will

54:08

want to go to the moon in order

54:11

to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. And

54:13

I think that's fascinating. And will

54:15

it happen? Look, I hope it

54:18

happens within the next 10 years. It's got a really

54:20

good shot. And if it happens within the next 10

54:22

years, it's just going to keep

54:24

happening and keep happening and keep happening

54:26

until it becomes as

54:29

routine as flying from

54:31

Long Island in New York City into

54:34

Paris, just like Charles Lindbergh did

54:36

it, or being able

54:38

to get on a 747 and flying from

54:40

Los Angeles to Sydney. It will

54:43

become something that is like, oh, yeah, oh,

54:45

oh, someone's going to flow back on the

54:47

moon. Oh, who did it this time? And

54:49

maybe they'll pay attention and maybe they won't. But it will

54:52

be being done by people who are phenomenally

54:54

invested in the enterprise itself.

54:56

So more people will choose

54:59

to go to the moon and they

55:02

will do it not because it is easy.

55:04

They'll do it because it is hard. Well,

55:06

that's a brilliantly optimistic. We don't normally end

55:08

the Rest of History episodes on

55:11

our optimistic notes. Optimistically? Okay,

55:13

well. So

55:15

Tom, before we let you go, and thank

55:17

you so much again for coming on the Rest of

55:20

History, beloved producer

55:23

Theo has banned us from saying goodbye to

55:25

you until we've asked you a few questions

55:27

about history. Bring it on. And don't worry,

55:29

they're not quiz questions. All right. So I

55:32

have my hand on the buzzer, hand on the

55:34

buzzer now. Okay, very good. Were you

55:36

interested in history as a child? And if

55:38

so, what particular bits of history did it

55:40

for you? Is this my starter for 10,

55:42

Dominick? I just want to make sure. Exactly

55:44

so. Get this wrong and you're out. Yes,

55:46

I've always been fascinated by history. For

55:48

some reason, I didn't have to take

55:51

notes in history class. I just

55:53

felt as though with a good teacher, I was here.

55:55

I was hearing this story that was kind of like

55:57

unforgettable. Math was beyond myself. I was

55:59

too late. crazy for English. But history,

56:01

it always just to be a version

56:03

of a great story that I

56:06

was hearing. And I think I

56:08

was aware, I guess, as a young man,

56:11

that I was living in historic

56:13

times. First of all, and I've

56:15

gone back and I've revisited certainly

56:17

World War II, the war, because

56:21

every adult in my

56:23

life talked about the

56:25

war in three very distinctive phases.

56:27

That was before the war. That

56:30

was during the war. Well, that

56:32

was right after the war. So

56:34

I knew that I had come

56:37

into the world after this great

56:39

conflagration that had really identified this

56:41

entire generation. I was aware of that. Then

56:44

when I was seven, John F.

56:46

Kennedy was assassinated. And to

56:48

be seven years old and to

56:50

witness something that was the equal

56:52

to, I don't know, Pearl Harbor

56:54

or Hiroshima or the assassination of

56:57

Abraham Lincoln, any incredible moment of

56:59

history, it's like, wow, I witnessed

57:01

that. And I don't think I'll

57:03

ever forget where I was when

57:05

I heard about it, nor the

57:07

atmosphere of those three or four

57:09

or five or six days that

57:11

went along with it. The world

57:13

was sad and I was sad

57:15

too, because history had occurred

57:18

in front of our very eyes. Now,

57:21

after that, I will tell you, and

57:24

this is no joke, I was

57:26

very much of the historical impact

57:28

of four lads from Liverpool that

57:31

came over not long after that.

57:33

Oh, brilliant. Because they removed

57:36

from us that burden of

57:38

sadness that the assassination of

57:40

John F. Kennedy had placed

57:42

upon us. We literally

57:44

were reintroduced to joy when we needed

57:46

it very, very badly. Now, that my

57:48

generation, but actually the generation of probably

57:51

anybody from seven to 27 was aware

57:53

of the

57:55

hay at corner has turned. So I've

57:57

always thought that, well, is this an

58:00

historic moment or not. I'll go back

58:02

to that crossing of a Rubicon image.

58:05

It's like, hey, we have crossed the Rubicon.

58:07

We used to be over there, but now

58:09

we're over here. Dominic and I disagree about

58:11

whether the Beatles are a historic moment. So

58:13

I'm glad that you agree with me that

58:15

they are. I never disagree with you. That's

58:17

a total lie. No, Dominic. So

58:20

you mentioned Lincoln there and you

58:22

mentioned JFK. Can we just

58:24

ask you which, if you had a

58:26

choice, which US president would you most

58:28

like to play? No, none.

58:31

I've read a very interesting

58:33

book about Calvin Coolidge. You

58:35

ready for this? I didn't

58:37

see that coming. Yeah. Didn't

58:39

see that coming. Yeah. Calvin

58:41

Coolidge, I think, forgive me, I may be

58:43

wrong about it. I believe Calvin Coolidge was

58:46

nothing much more than he was like the

58:48

governor of Vermont and ended up serving as

58:50

president of the United States for two terms

58:52

during which the country was almost destroyed economically.

58:55

And in this collection of essays in a

58:57

volume, I read that he lived out a

58:59

very tactful way,

59:01

that the president had little

59:03

knowledge about his life, Calvin Coolidge,

59:06

retired back in his Vermont small

59:08

town. And he apologized to people for what he had done

59:13

as president. No way. Because

59:15

he had a very laissez-faire hands-off kind of

59:17

thing. He knew that he was of root cause

59:19

of the great debacle that turned into the Great Depression in 1929. And

59:22

that sort of

59:26

thing. And he was trying to be that humble at the

59:28

end of his life saying, you know, I'm sorry, I blew

59:30

it. Sorry. I should have been

59:32

on it better. I hope that's true. Yeah.

59:34

That is a tremendous choice. So there you

59:36

go. I'm declaring right here. The rest is

59:38

history. If you have a movie

59:41

about Calvin Coolidge, sign me up. That's got

59:43

blockbuster written all over it. So,

59:45

what about, because I know you do production

59:48

as well, if you went to

59:50

some big studio or whatever,

59:53

and they said, listen, Tom, we want a historical epic, but

59:56

the subject of your choice. And since you've done

59:58

a lot to do with the second world, I'm

1:00:00

going to ban you. The justice of the air presumably is

1:00:02

that. Well, I was about to say I'm going to ban

1:00:04

you from a second world war or world war theme choice.

1:00:06

So you have to go back a bit further in history.

1:00:09

All right. I'm good. What

1:00:11

are you going to choose? All right. Are you

1:00:13

ready for this? Yeah. Maybe like

1:00:15

yourselves, I know a number of people, men and

1:00:17

women of all ages, some of them

1:00:19

are peers and some of them are not, whose

1:00:22

lives were completely changed

1:00:26

for the better over a long, difficult

1:00:28

struggle by, are you ready for this?

1:00:31

Yeah. Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh,

1:00:33

wow. These guys came up with this thing

1:00:35

called a 12 step program. Yeah.

1:00:38

That just keep each other from

1:00:40

drinking themselves into an alcoholic stupor.

1:00:43

And that was in the 1930s, 1940s, and it really came about in the 1950s.

1:00:48

Now no one makes money off of

1:00:50

my understanding about Alcoholics Anonymous. But if

1:00:52

you were going to say, has there

1:00:54

been a life altering movement that has

1:00:56

really changed in some ways the world's

1:00:58

for the better by way of defining

1:01:01

and enlightening people in the

1:01:03

realm of human behavior? I'd

1:01:05

say Alcoholics Anonymous has. And I think

1:01:08

it's a fascinating story that has, I

1:01:10

haven't read a lot about it, but there's a number of

1:01:12

things like the history of that organization.

1:01:15

It's about as vibrant in its vivid as any that

1:01:17

you're going to come across. The

1:01:20

funny thing is that there are how many

1:01:22

millions of members of Alcoholics Anonymous are there

1:01:24

out there? And the most you

1:01:26

can get out of any of this, well, how

1:01:28

does it work? And they'll all say, well, quite

1:01:30

nicely. Thank you. That's all you're going

1:01:32

to get. That would

1:01:34

be something that if someone wanted to

1:01:36

throw down and say, let's examine that.

1:01:38

Right. You heard it here first. Well,

1:01:41

let's say they're listening. Yeah, of course they're listening. So I

1:01:43

would be remiss. I would be letting myself down

1:01:46

and my family down. If I didn't ask

1:01:48

you one last question and it is

1:01:50

this. Is there

1:01:52

any chance that you might put on

1:01:54

the hat once more and bring Woody

1:01:56

back to the screens in

1:01:59

another Toy Story? film. Now everybody

1:02:01

loves Toy Story except one person

1:02:03

would you believe. Who?

1:02:05

That person is with

1:02:07

us right now, Tom. Tom Holland. He

1:02:09

is Tom Holland. Can you believe

1:02:11

it? So shocking. Anyway, let's put

1:02:13

that up. We were very much, as I

1:02:16

think I've mentioned, very much a Forrest Gump

1:02:18

family rather than a Toy Story family. Unbelievable.

1:02:20

I just want to spot that on record.

1:02:22

I just wanted to shame Tom. But also,

1:02:24

would you play Woody again? Please say yes.

1:02:27

This is in the hands of the

1:02:29

great overlords of commerce.

1:02:32

Absolutely. Matter of fact, I will tell

1:02:34

you this. Tim Allen and I still

1:02:37

get together about once a month

1:02:39

because we knew that we were

1:02:41

part of something quite profound that

1:02:44

started 20, more

1:02:46

than 25 years ago. That's when

1:02:48

we did the first Toy Story. And

1:02:50

there has been some jungle drums that

1:02:53

why not try to do it a fifth

1:02:55

time? But I will say I think the

1:02:57

gatekeepers of all things, Woody and Buzz and

1:02:59

Bo Peep and Slinky Dog and whatnot, do

1:03:02

not take their tasks lightly. No

1:03:05

one is going to just rush

1:03:07

something out. If

1:03:09

they do it, if it happens, boy, it's

1:03:11

going to have to go through a hot

1:03:13

house atmosphere and pass all sorts of very,

1:03:15

very rigorous sort of tests before

1:03:19

we would do that. But I'm game. I'd love

1:03:21

to. Oh, great. Great news. I hope my voice

1:03:23

is still high pitched enough in order to get

1:03:25

there. Buzz Aldrin,

1:03:27

was he thrilled? Oh, God, yes. Oh, I'm

1:03:29

sure he was. Buzz came to, I think,

1:03:32

every premiere there was for any of the

1:03:34

Toy Story. I love

1:03:37

it. Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, Tom, thank you so

1:03:39

much for doing that. It's

1:03:41

been absolutely wonderful. And it would

1:03:43

be remiss of me at this

1:03:45

point not to mention the brilliant

1:03:47

show which you narrate, Moonwalkers, which

1:03:49

is on at the Lightroom in

1:03:51

London, King's Cross, until the 13th

1:03:53

of October, 2024. Exactly

1:03:56

right. And you tell the whole

1:03:59

astonishing story. But you know just of

1:04:01

people walking on the moon, but of humanity's obsession with

1:04:03

the moon. It's wonderfully

1:04:05

done. So thank you so much for joining us.

1:04:08

Yeah, thank you very much, Tom. You're quite welcome.

1:04:11

I will tell you this. This is just a

1:04:13

warning to perhaps to some of your audience members.

1:04:15

I was just in London, and I jumped in

1:04:17

a cab to get out to King's Cross. One

1:04:19

of those fabulous, you know, London black cabbies, you

1:04:21

know, I hopped in. I said, I'm going to

1:04:23

a place called Lightroom. Do you know it? It's

1:04:26

out in King's Cross. You know what King's Cross is?

1:04:29

That's what he said.

1:04:31

So we're on our way. He said, where are you from?

1:04:33

And I said, I'm from Los Angeles. Oh, I don't know. It's

1:04:35

right up. I can't quite understand. But he says,

1:04:38

so why you got a King's Cross? I

1:04:40

said, well, I'm going to this place called the

1:04:42

Lightroom. What is that? I said, well,

1:04:45

it's kind of like an exhibit kind of thing. There's

1:04:47

a show there that we put on it, and it's

1:04:49

called the Moonwalkers. He said, well,

1:04:52

Moonwalkers? What is that? Michael

1:04:54

Jackson thing? I

1:04:58

said, no, actually, it's not. It's

1:05:01

about the Apollo program that... Oh, no,

1:05:03

it's Space Men. Yeah, Space

1:05:05

Men. Oh, that was it. So

1:05:07

in the words of that London cabbie, it's not

1:05:09

a Michael Jackson thing. No,

1:05:11

it's not the Michael. No, it's not. Brilliant.

1:05:14

So on that bombshell, thank you so much to

1:05:16

Tom Hanks for joining us. Thank you to everybody

1:05:18

for listening. And I think,

1:05:21

Tom, this experiment with Hollywood stars, talking about

1:05:23

historical subjects, has been an absolute triumph. Yeah,

1:05:25

it's worked, hasn't it? Let's keep it up.

1:05:28

You know, what's sad about this, this

1:05:30

is what we talk about down at the

1:05:32

office all the time anyway, guys. This is

1:05:34

just a Friday for me. I'm

1:05:36

glad you were a part of it. Thank you. Well,

1:05:39

listen, next time, we will be back with the Frankly

1:05:41

Prussian War, and we'll be doing that with Zendaya. So

1:05:43

we'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Take

1:05:45

care, guys. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

1:05:55

Bye-bye.