Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t think we’re overstating that today we’ll be presenting you with one of he greatest presidential phone calls of all time.

And believe, me, we’ve listened to a lot of them. Sure - even as we point out here on the show - they can’t all be winners. When you’re dealing with United States presidents and found audio, you never know what you’re going to get.

But we think you’ll be pleasantly suprised by todays call - and it might even merit a relisten or two. Even more interesting, the phone call in this episode is the polar opposite from our last episode. While last week we tuned into President Nixon calling the astronauts on the moon, this week we have President Johnson calling aquanaut Scott Carpenter at the bottom of the ocean, some two hundred feet down!

The date? September 26, 1965. The occassion? Aquanaut Carpenter had just broken a record for being submerged the longest with the Navy’s underwater experimental laboratory, Sealab II.

The thing is, though, the aquanauts in Sealab II were breathing a very special mixture of air to help with conditioning themselves to the underwater conditions and dives. Their atmosphere was composed of a large part of the gas Helium. And if you’ve ever sucked up a balloon to make yourself talk funny, I think you can see where this is going….

So grab a balloon, take a deep breath and hit that play button!