0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode

0:02

of Why Would You Tell Me That?

0:11

With

0:14

Neil Delamere and Dave Moore. If you want to get in touch,

0:17

I'm at Neil Delamere Comedy on Instagram. He's at

0:19

Dave Today FM and we're proudly part

0:21

of the Acast Creator Network. On

0:23

this show, if you're just tuning in, if you're

0:26

just joining us, well, where have you been for the last

0:28

five seasons? Number one. And number

0:30

two, basically the show is we try and

0:32

tell you things that you should know, but

0:35

maybe you don't know. And there are interesting things backed

0:37

up by experts in the second half. And today... Well, yeah,

0:40

yeah. That's an important distinction.

0:41

The experts come in the second

0:44

half. In the first half of each episode,

0:46

we tell you interesting things that you maybe don't know that

0:48

have absolutely no backup

0:51

whatsoever, except possibly

0:53

that we heard something in a pub toilet once. I

0:56

know we do. I have sources in my episodes and

0:58

you have a bird told me in my

1:00

dreams. You have these

1:03

mystic visions. You go off into the desert,

1:05

which I'm trying to remember the name of that

1:07

drug. I can't remember what it is. Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca,

1:10

yes. Yeah. And

1:11

then you come back and tell me random stuff. And you know,

1:14

you usually show me a source. So I

1:16

believe you up till now. Up till now, yeah.

1:18

Well, no, I mean, all my stuff today

1:21

is sourced. I just can't remember where it was in

1:23

some shamanic tent somewhere at some point. OK,

1:27

so it is your turn to tell me something interesting.

1:29

Yeah, it is. It is. What do you got? OK, well,

1:32

actually, I do think you're going to enjoy this one because

1:34

we've done a couple of episodes on

1:37

things in space. Yeah. We

1:40

talked about when

1:41

we talked about the volcanic eruption

1:43

that gave us Frankenstein. We

1:45

did mention that there were, for example, ice

1:47

volcanoes in space that spew

1:50

out ice and

1:51

water vapor and things in, you

1:53

know, into the unknown of space. So

1:56

we're going to go to space today, except we're going to go to

1:58

our nearest spatial.

1:59

neighbor and we're going to go to

2:02

the moon. And Neil, you may remember

2:04

that you presented us with comedians

2:07

in the past who have

2:09

been able to, you know, step

2:11

outside of the world of comedy.

2:14

Like for example, Nick Sampson did

2:16

the episode about the St. Louis Olympic

2:18

marathon. Do you remember in 1904? Yeah, because

2:20

he did a show in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

2:22

about it. Yeah. Well, I may

2:24

have thought that was a great idea that way you did

2:27

that. And I've gone to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

2:29

and found a fella called Matt Hobbs,

2:31

who is a comedian, also a scientist

2:34

and a moon landing enthusiast. And

2:36

he is going to tell us in part two about

2:39

the lad. Yeah.

2:40

Who turned down the chance to

2:42

go to the moon.

2:44

And this lad is the exact opposite

2:46

of who you might think it is if you

2:48

start guessing now, so don't start guessing

2:50

now because you'll be opposite. We

2:52

get to that in part two, right? Cut to 40 minutes

2:55

later and I'm still shouting out names. Exactly.

2:57

So he's the exact opposite of the person who I think

2:59

would like to go to the moon. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

3:02

You've just ensured I don't listen to you for the next 20 minutes. Exactly.

3:04

Yeah. You do really like that. Okay. Along with everyone else. But I'll

3:06

tell you what I'm going to do in part one. I'm going to tell you

3:08

about other moons because there

3:11

are so many. And the thing is we keep discovering

3:13

new moons, even within our own solar system. Like

3:16

for example, when we launched the Voyager

3:18

probes about what, four decades

3:20

ago, you know, we thought that Jupiter

3:23

had nine moons and that Uranus

3:25

had seven, whatever now they have like,

3:28

you know, there's 90 something moons around

3:30

Jupiter and there's 20 something around it.

3:33

But I don't think they're the most interesting

3:35

moons, most interesting moons in our solar system are

3:37

around Saturn. Okay. So

3:40

we're going to just journey in here through

3:42

and think about what you know about Saturn. Okay. So

3:44

pattern in case anyone's has difficulty

3:46

with the solar system, Saturn is the one with

3:48

the rings. Yeah. Big yellow one

3:51

ring. The yellow one tilted to its side and

3:53

the rings gone around the equator of

3:55

the planets and then obviously spread it. One

3:58

of the maddest things, those are moons. madder

4:00

things about those rings is they're basically 10

4:03

meters huh yeah like

4:05

it's so insane yeah so

4:08

like a lot of them most of

4:10

the rings are so

4:12

tiny in terms of their height

4:15

yeah but they're massive in terms of

4:18

their width and their their

4:20

spread across and that's why we can see them but

4:22

they're tiny they're not very tall

4:25

things at all they just reflect

4:27

the light and so we can see them but

4:29

it's insane that these things are 10 meters

4:31

tall than most parts did you ever

4:34

have that childhood toy that looked like

4:36

Saturn that you stood on and bounced up and

4:38

down I did do you remember the name but I

4:40

do no it was called the low

4:42

low ball really yep

4:45

the low low ball how do

4:47

you remember the name of that because like I mean you're slightly

4:50

older than me but I seem to remember

4:52

you tell me before up until that you got

4:54

the low low ball you used to play with like a stick

4:57

and a ring and for

5:00

you would catch it when you catch a ball in

5:03

the spoon isn't that what you did at the hedge

5:05

school it was not a ball it was

5:07

a rounded potato and

5:11

now I know you're lying because the potatoes didn't come on till the Spanish

5:13

brought it back so you're clearly

5:15

lying now it was an egg

5:18

the reason I know the low low ball is because

5:20

it took the front teeth of so many

5:23

of my pre-communion school

5:25

friends I

5:28

remember as well as an instrument of death and

5:30

torture that was the one you could actually get free

5:32

in a dentist the dentist used to hand

5:34

them out because

5:37

the parents didn't know no more pogo sticks please

5:39

do it oh this is way safer yes

5:41

likely slightly deflated ball with

5:44

a ring of plastic what could possibly

5:46

go expensive dental treatment yeah do you know

5:49

the way a horse kind of knows it just leads

5:51

you to the place you go most often

5:53

on a ball go ball or whatever that is called

5:55

he's brought you the closest dentist

5:58

yeah like a homie page

6:00

it just brought you back there. And

6:02

of course the most uneven surface was just outside the

6:04

dental surgery where you were guaranteed to go on

6:06

your face. We're gonna absolutely get

6:08

sued by dentists. Oh definitely and Lolo

6:11

ball manufacturers whoever makes that anymore. Anyway

6:13

let's go back to the rings for a second. Okay so the rings

6:16

are actually just made up of tiny

6:18

particles of ice and rock and

6:20

I don't know if you know but one of

6:22

the features of the rings is that there's actually

6:25

gaps. Okay so

6:27

you think about it like it's what's not just you

6:29

know one kind of continuous

6:32

ring of it's it's a ring then followed

6:34

by the Cassini gap and then

6:36

there's a named after other astronomers

6:39

who've discovered the gap. So they're literally

6:41

uniform gaps in the rings

6:43

to go around and they are created

6:46

and policed by and this is a great

6:48

name for something Neil, shepherd satellites.

6:52

No. Yeah so what these are these

6:54

are moons okay and they effectively

6:56

clear the way for these gaps

6:59

by sucking in some

7:02

of the particles that so like you

7:04

know the ones that are kind of get dislodged and come out

7:06

that would perhaps eventually form

7:08

their own new ring. No they

7:10

get sucked into the moon they're impacted into the moon

7:13

and then other ones they just force back

7:15

out by their gravitational forces.

7:17

They go no you back in back in there to

7:19

the ring where you were. So they basically

7:22

clear these rings all the

7:24

way around and that's when you look at the rings of Saturn

7:26

you will see that there are yes line line line

7:29

gap line line gap big and

7:31

they have names and they're done by these

7:33

and one of the moons I want to tell you about today does

7:36

a job in there it is the closest one

7:38

to Saturn and it's called pan. Now

7:41

I feel a bit bad for it being called pan because

7:43

like some of the moons have class names

7:46

like we'll get to a few of them in a while that have good names

7:48

but like there's you know they're from

7:50

Greek mythology like

7:53

for example I have a very famous keyboard called

7:55

the Korg Triton where the moons is called

7:57

Triton Triton I am

7:59

a God I'm some kind of a brilliant like

8:02

it's a great name. I am a god and also

8:04

on a lecture shower But

8:07

this guy is just called pan so

8:10

well I call them Keith and Daphne

8:13

Yes, actually, why do they not have names on some

8:15

of them are named after? Shakespearean

8:18

characters But again, they're

8:20

disappointing because they're kind of they're called Ophelia, which

8:22

is a cool sounding name. You do

8:24

want to be called Derek okay,

8:27

let's go back to pan right pan is It's

8:30

a hundred and thirty four thousand kilometers from the

8:32

center of Saturn. So it's actually very close

8:35

to Saturn it's very small as well,

8:37

it's only 35 kilometers across and 23 kilometers

8:41

wide and tall But here's

8:43

the best thing about it. It looks like you

8:45

know Fresh pasta that

8:48

you get in the supermarket like

8:50

where in our house anyway with four

8:52

kids It's like I have neither

8:54

the money the time nor the interest

8:57

to care about the nutritional

8:59

intake of my children So I'm going to get

9:01

them fresh pasta from dawns, right? So basically

9:04

it takes two minutes in the pot you

9:06

pour a bit of sauce over it and you hand it to the

9:08

children go Shut up and eat that right

9:11

but in there you you get tortellini.

9:14

Okay. Yeah, tortellini If anyone knows

9:16

them, you'll know the shape I'm talking about. It's a very Unsatisfied

9:21

shape it's not spherical. It's

9:23

just a folded over kind of hand

9:26

creased irregular shape

9:28

of Pasta and of course we

9:31

know for a fact that pan is full of ricotta because

9:33

all moons are made of cheese We know this absolutely

9:36

obviously obviously. Yep, or if you fried

9:38

an egg and then fried another egg

9:40

and Slipped one egg upside

9:42

down. Yeah, and then put the other egg on

9:44

top of it You'd have the flat

9:47

bit of the white egg and you'd have a bulbous bit

9:49

of the yellow. Yeah, that's the shape

9:51

of time Okay, I think

9:54

we can all thank God that you're not an astronomer You

9:58

have to describe things fried

10:00

egg theory this is a good

10:04

the taurizilini suggestion

10:06

and is this a bouncer

10:09

moon then is this yes

10:12

you can't come in you're wearing runners

10:15

leave me gapped here there come on members

10:17

only I don't care where you go but you just

10:19

can't be in here are they just clicking of

10:21

the little clicker with all the rocks that have come out without

10:25

one in but this is when the shepherd moons is this

10:27

a shepherd satellite yeah yeah so and

10:29

the reason for his shape is that well there

10:31

are theoretical reasons for shape because we don't know

10:33

right so the theoretical

10:36

logic of this weird kind of sphere

10:38

in fact you know what it quite resembles Saturn

10:41

actually in the sense that it's like

10:43

quite round and then it has this kind of equatorial ridge

10:45

around it right yeah and the theory is that

10:47

it is it is a piece of ice and

10:49

it has attracted other smaller pieces

10:52

to it and that once the the

10:54

bigger of the smaller pieces was it kind of

10:57

it was finished with all of them the little

10:59

bits that were left kept going to the equator

11:01

because that's where they were being attracted to and

11:03

so then it was finished making it's kind

11:06

of you know as spherical a bit as it could

11:08

be make and the rest of it just kept attracted

11:10

to the to the equator and that's why it it

11:13

genuinely looks like a mini Saturn and

11:15

it's very interesting moon so like men

11:17

tend to put weight on around their waist yeah

11:21

so it's kind of that sort of vibe

11:23

is it I'm if you're going with that I'm gonna I'm

11:26

happy to say that my carbs go straight

11:28

there yeah and yeah pines legs

11:30

fine bum lovely lovely bum of a lovely bum

11:33

man in his mid 40s

11:35

that's absolutely what it looks like he's a man movie

11:37

to man yeah man man Hyperion

11:40

I told you the Ramones are cool names Hyperion

11:43

Hyperion is the largest irregular

11:46

object known in the solar system

11:49

okay now what I mean by that what

11:52

does that mean I can't be trusted I mean he makes

11:54

a bowl of his bath every year sometimes he gets

11:56

it right but if it's irregular or

11:58

is he irregular in that he does excrete

12:01

large rocks but you just don't know when and it

12:03

depends on the zyas is it was

12:05

he one of the irregulars which I think is like

12:07

an auxiliary force and I mean

12:10

there's so many ways what I mean

12:13

I should probably clarify a regularly

12:16

shaped is what I'm hinting at so obviously

12:18

we know most objects in the universe

12:21

and certainly in our solar system are beautifully

12:23

spherical yeah they're very nicely put together

12:25

and yes some of them are gas some of them

12:28

are a little bit irregular but this guy is

12:30

all over the shop right there's nothing you couldn't

12:33

put a shape on this like if you thought of

12:35

the ugliest miss

12:38

most miss shape and potato you could think of that's

12:40

kind of where we're at with this right now it's big

12:42

enough it says it's the largest irregular objects

12:45

in the solar system that's not a moment it's 360

12:47

kilometers wide which again if you compare

12:50

it to the fellow we were just talking about pan

12:53

he was only 35 kilometers so it's 10

12:55

times bigger and it has what's known

12:57

as a chaotic orbit okay

12:59

so as you know once you when

13:01

you're orbiting a larger body

13:05

you spin and sometimes you spin

13:07

in the same direction as the body sometimes you spin the

13:10

opposite direction you may spin up

13:12

or down or whatever but it's still in in

13:15

one direction all the time hmm

13:18

a chaotic orbit is up

13:20

for a bit backwards down left

13:23

right this thing is completely insanely

13:26

spinning there's no pattern to it which

13:28

I think is really unfair to anybody

13:30

who gets motion sickness because you

13:33

if you if you ever end up on

13:35

Hyperion it's gonna be like the worst

13:37

roller coaster you could ever imagine

13:39

imagine

13:41

the wobble you'd be getting you're

13:43

sitting on Hyperion you just can't get

13:45

used to it no I mean that would take a lot of

13:48

quell wouldn't it how are you and how

13:50

are you in that sort of motion well

13:52

I think I would get sick on planes or

13:54

no I was gonna ask you simply

13:57

because I don't go on roller coaster so and

14:00

trains but I don't mind if I'm traveling backwards on

14:02

the train. I do mind if I'm traveling backwards on the

14:04

plane because that doesn't happen but you know what

14:07

like I don't mind no I've no kind

14:09

of motion. That's too steep a climb or

14:12

is it too steep a climb or too steep

14:14

a dive? I'm trying to remember. It's not good if you're going

14:18

backwards as well but no I don't mind I don't get car

14:20

sick and none of those things but I will

14:22

not go on roller coasters. Now

14:25

this is not because I get motion sickness

14:27

it's because I don't

14:30

trust carneys.

14:31

Simple as that. I

14:33

don't trust anybody. I don't care if you're qualified

14:36

I don't care if you're an engineer

14:38

I don't care if you have a master's I don't

14:40

care. When you go to team

14:44

pack you know the

14:47

soda fountain the the coke machine

14:49

might be broken. The ice cream freezer

14:52

might have malfunctioned. The burger

14:54

sauce dispenser could be blocked

14:56

right? These are standard things that could

14:59

happen in theme parks. Well then I

15:01

feel like the rivets on the

15:03

upside down 35,000 kilometer

15:06

an hour roller coaster is also

15:08

potentially going to have something wrong with it on

15:10

the day that I go so I will never

15:13

go on anything. Would

15:16

you allow your kids to go on those things though? Knock

15:18

yourself out. I mean

15:20

quite literally and also

15:23

whatever we want. I mean I don't care what I feed

15:26

them with the irregular tortellini.

15:29

I don't care what death defying traps

15:31

they go on. I've got four

15:33

of them. No one's gonna miss one or two. It's

15:36

gonna be fine. We just went on

15:38

a family holiday to Orlando to do

15:40

the theme parks and obviously

15:43

I don't go on anything. My wife barely

15:45

goes on like the Walters at best.

15:48

She wouldn't survive on Hyperion and

15:50

when like the

15:52

oldest two lads like we're kind of going I think

15:54

I might go on this thing. I'm not gonna they went on one very

15:58

medium roller coaster. out the two

16:00

of them almost in tears and went, nope, I'm not

16:02

doing any more and I was like, they're my

16:05

kids. You went to Orlando

16:08

and you didn't go on any

16:10

of the rights. Mother of god, it's like going

16:12

to Jerusalem and not looking

16:14

at any of the religious stuff. It's like

16:16

going Stonehenge and

16:19

going, the grass is very well kept,

16:21

isn't it? What is wrong

16:23

with you? I literally didn't.

16:26

And like, I was there for two weeks. You

16:28

go to the zoo and not like animals. The

16:34

only thing I went on was in

16:37

one of the parks, there was a Dr.

16:40

Zeus, you know him? Yeah. Yeah. So

16:43

he had obviously, he's very young children.

16:45

Yeah. And there was a train that

16:48

went, it

16:51

went up all right. But then it stayed

16:53

at that level for a long time. Then it had a very gentle

16:55

decline back down and

16:57

then went around and went up and I went

17:00

on that and I didn't feel particularly

17:02

safe on that.

17:06

It's like a hermus doing an escape room.

17:11

Everybody else leaves and he goes, I just, I'm just going

17:13

to stay here on my own. I really like the peace and quiet.

17:16

I've seen the person ever to have locked themselves

17:19

deliberately into an escape. That's

17:22

so odd. Yeah, I know I am

17:24

odd, but no, I would never go on that. And therefore I

17:26

would never take a day trip to Hyperion

17:29

if that was an offer from Elon Musk's future

17:31

trips. It's almost willfully

17:34

stubborn. That's what that is. I'm still

17:36

trying to think of the best analogy. I think it's like a

17:39

creationist going to the Galapagos and

17:41

going, God made that, God made that, God

17:43

made that, God made that as well.

17:46

So back to Hyperion for a second. Okay. It only

17:48

has half the density of water. What?

17:52

Yeah. Listen, I am no scientist,

17:54

but I think we've established that. But

17:59

it only has half. density of water, this thing,

18:01

it's made up of ice basically.

18:04

So it gets hit all the time by these fellas

18:06

that are coming out of the rings trying to be, trying

18:08

to get into the club as you, right? It's a bouncer.

18:10

It's gone. Yeah. I knew. So the small fellas goes,

18:13

yeah, you just get in here and it sucks it into

18:15

themselves. Okay. The bigger fellas goes now

18:17

back out there, but the ones that get, they hit

18:19

into it and they create these massive craters.

18:21

In fact, one of the craters on

18:23

Hyperion is 120 kilometers wide.

18:28

Wow. Okay. That's, that's kind

18:31

of amazing. What a skate park. What

18:33

a skate park that would be. But

18:35

here's the thing. Avril Lavigne would be hanging out

18:37

there all the time. Local fellas. It

18:40

is, as a result, it is one of the most interestingly

18:43

shaped objects in the world,

18:45

or surface objects, because it actually

18:47

resembles a sponge. Have

18:49

you ever seen a fossilized sponge from

18:51

kind of, you know, dinosaur

18:54

ears? Get shut up. I

18:57

thought he would have been close to this. He's only about two years

19:00

old. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, maybe a bit more. Yeah.

19:02

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I have seen a fossilized

19:04

sponge. But that's what Hyperion looks like. So

19:06

it's spinning in all these mad ways as

19:09

it goes around Saturn. And

19:11

it looks like a mad sponge and it's getting

19:13

hit all the time. It's not like some of them

19:15

are ancient, sure. But it's getting hit all the time

19:18

and doing its job and being a shepherd

19:20

satellite. Another one is unbelievable.

19:22

Its name is MIMAS. M-I-M-A-S.

19:25

And in fact, I'm going to send you a picture while we're

19:28

talking, Neil, because I know this is like, obviously

19:30

isn't helpful to anyone who's listening.

19:32

But if you are listening and you can Google

19:35

a picture of MIMAS, type

19:37

in MIMAS Death

19:39

Star, right? Oh my God. And you'll get to

19:41

them side by side. Now,

19:43

Neil, you're looking at that. Yeah. You have to

19:45

agree with me. There is no way that

19:48

George Lucas and the designers didn't copy

19:50

MIMAS when they created the Death Star. That

19:52

looks exactly like the Death Star.

19:55

It looks like a ball with

19:57

an indentation. in

20:00

it that you would that

20:02

looks like to be on the same position yeah

20:04

it knows exactly the same

20:07

yeah you want another wildest thing that

20:09

is a complete and insane

20:13

coincidence because Star

20:15

Wars came out in 1977 when the Death Star and

20:18

was there that's the first

20:21

time we saw it as humans and the first time

20:23

we saw Mimas was in 1980

20:26

yeah I mean you say it like it's an amazing

20:29

coincidence but all you're saying is that

20:31

all scientific knowledge has found something

20:34

in the universe that looks like a George Lucas

20:36

creation that's weird that it looks so like

20:44

a George Lucas creation and here we are

20:46

finding it three years later that is still

20:49

some kind of a coincidence let me tell you about the

20:51

crater that's in it that looks exactly like the kind

20:53

of laser crater in the Death Star yeah it has

20:56

a name it's called Herschel is the name of the

20:58

crater it's 140 kilometers wide

21:05

its walls are five

21:07

kilometers tall so you were talking

21:09

about a skate park imagine trying to do like

21:12

going up and doing a 180 the top of that

21:14

you'd be going she's I'm going up here

21:16

now a fair while five

21:18

kilometers I've got 300 kilometers

21:21

don't another 4.7 k the gold

21:23

will it reach the top absolutely massive

21:26

and in the middle of if you look at the picture of Mimas

21:28

again in the middle of the crater you'll see a peak

21:30

yeah a six-ounce that's six

21:33

kilometers tall that peak is six

21:35

kilometers tall so is that just it does that

21:37

come up from the bottom of the crater and then so the

21:39

top of that is a is a kilometer over the over

21:42

the over the thing so yeah I'd imagine again again

21:44

no scientists but I imagine massive impact

21:48

obviously shoves all of the matter

21:51

out of the crater but then some of it settles

21:53

back down in the peak and that's what you get

21:55

right in the middle of it absolutely phenomenal Tony

21:58

Hawk alone that by the end of this podcast Okay,

22:03

yeah, I, I apitus,

22:05

yapitus, I don't know. It's IAP ETUS.

22:09

This is cool because this moon is

22:11

known as the invisible moon. Nothing

22:13

visible man, the invisible moon. Now

22:15

it's big, right? Okay. The half the size of our

22:17

moon and it orbits like some kind of, I don't

22:20

know, 335 million miles or something. I

22:22

don't know. Actually, I don't know. So I'll go wrong. Anyway, it's

22:24

millions of miles from Jupiter as it is

22:26

orbiting. But Cassini, the Italian

22:28

astronomer observed this moon about 350 years ago, but

22:32

he couldn't work it out because he could only ever see

22:34

the moon to the right of Jupiter. And

22:37

he thought he was going crazy because all the other moons he go,

22:40

there's the moon over there. Oh yeah. Now it's gone. It's gone dark.

22:43

And there it is over there. And

22:45

he looked at this and he go, okay, there's that fellow

22:48

there. Now that really bright lad. I see

22:50

him and then he'd be gone. And he

22:52

go, oh, and then he'd appear again,

22:54

the right hand side. And he go, ah, here's some kind

22:56

of orbit. We don't know about where it goes forwards and backwards.

22:59

What has happened? This doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

23:02

Again, the Voyager pros went and took pictures

23:04

of it and they figured out what it is. Okay. So,

23:06

you know, the way on a tennis ball, you have those kind

23:09

of, it's divided in two, but it's like

23:11

the yin and yang kind of thing. It's not, it's not a, yeah,

23:13

it's not a straight kind of cut the diameter in half.

23:15

It's kind of weirdly shaped. It has

23:17

that scenario, but it has

23:20

a dark side and a light

23:22

side. All he could ever see

23:24

Cassini was the light side. Cause it's

23:26

about five times brighter than the

23:28

dark side. So it would go bright,

23:30

bright, bright, bright, bright. And then we'll go behind the

23:33

Saturn. It would come back out and then it'd be like, Oh,

23:35

hang on. It's gone. It's not gone. It

23:37

was just the dark side. You couldn't see with the

23:39

telescopes that he had on and that we had until

23:41

we had Voyager. So that's why it disappears. There's

23:44

a theory that actually the dark side

23:47

is actually made up of some kind of carbon based

23:50

to try to some material. So

23:53

there's a mild possibility that that could be

23:55

living.

23:56

What? Nope.

23:57

Again, no one's got, we haven't got.

24:00

close enough with any probes to be able to like test

24:02

any of this but the fact that

24:04

they think it's carbon-based may

24:07

possibly mean

24:09

that there is some kind of life in it. The

24:11

other thing that this moon has which is phenomenal

24:14

right this is Iapetus.

24:16

If there is what do you think

24:18

the life will be? I would suggest go

24:21

on it's probably an Irish pub. I

24:25

mean they're absolutely everywhere.

24:27

There would be some kind

24:30

of single-celled organism and

24:33

then there would be a pub with a sign that

24:35

says Athens-Rhy 420

24:37

million kilometres. There would

24:40

be a typewriter hanging off the

24:42

walls. There would be a bicycle. There

24:45

would be the fella carrying the

24:48

girder with Guinness is

24:50

good for you. He'd be there yeah. It

24:53

would be nine million point

24:55

seven five par six cent pounds

24:58

for a point of absolutely shite

25:00

Guinness. It would be

25:02

terrible. Absolutely terrible. The

25:08

other cool thing about it is that it also

25:11

has much like Saturn does and much like pandas

25:13

and start we explained it has a little ridge

25:15

around the equator. I say little. It's 13

25:20

kilometres tall. Now you

25:22

remember we did the episode on

25:24

Olympus Mons. Remember I told you about

25:26

the tallest thing in

25:29

our solar system is Olympus Mons which

25:31

is a volcano on Mars.

25:34

Yeah that's about the same. It's almost

25:36

the same almost as tall as Olympus Mons. It's 20

25:39

kilometres wide and it runs

25:41

for the entire dark side

25:44

of this moon. Iapetus right?

25:47

And again they don't know why it's only on the dark

25:50

side. They don't know why it's so massive. They

25:52

know that it's absolutely ancient because

25:54

of the way it's been cratered as

25:56

well the way that's happened. But they also

25:58

have theorized that it might be related to

26:01

the carbon-based material and that the carbon-based

26:03

material might be coming off another object that

26:06

only faces the dark side of

26:08

the planet which is why there's more of the planet there

26:11

and it's why it's some kind of carbon-based thing. This is

26:13

potentially fascinating in other

26:16

words we have to you know investigate it further

26:18

but Iapetus might be the weirdest

26:20

moon that's out there certainly the weirdest one around

26:23

Saturn.

26:23

Wow

26:24

yeah I mean it's not potentially fascinating

26:26

it is fascinating but it is potential

26:29

for life form and everything else. And

26:31

everything stuff we just don't understand. You're good

26:33

at this man. Well I don't know whether I am

26:35

but I know who is Matt Hobbs a comedian

26:37

a scientist and a moon landing enthusiast

26:40

he's gonna join us to tell us all about

26:43

the lad who turned down the chance

26:45

to go to the moon. This

26:50

episode is brought to you by Progressive.

26:53

Most of you aren't just listening right now you're

26:55

driving cleaning and even exercising

26:58

but what if you could be saving money by switching to progressive.

27:02

Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average

27:06

and auto customers qualify for an average of

27:08

seven discounts.

27:10

Multitask right now quote today

27:12

at progressive.com progressive

27:14

casualty insurance company and affiliates national average 12 months

27:16

savings of $744 by new customers surveyed are

27:19

saved with progressive between June 2022 and May 2023 potential savings will vary

27:23

discounts not available in all safe situations.

27:39

Welcome back to part two of why

27:41

would you tell me that right Neil you grabbed a

27:43

comic from the Edinburgh Fringe festival

27:46

last season if anyone wants to check out the incredible

27:48

story that Nick Sampson told us about

27:50

the st. Louis Olympic marathon what was it 1904

27:53

1904 yeah he was brilliant he did an edinburgh fringe

27:56

show on on the whole thing yeah oh and the

27:58

story itself is absolutely Absolutely.

28:01

It's unhinged. You have to go back and

28:03

listen to it. So go back over to our back catalogue,

28:05

find the marathon episodes and have a listen.

28:08

But look, I thought I might do the same, Neil, if that's all

28:10

right. But I found the perfect man

28:12

to tell us an amazing story. And like to say, I've nabbed

28:14

Matt Hobbs, stand up, a scientist

28:18

and moon landing enthusiast. Matt has

28:20

done a show in the Fringe called Moon Talker,

28:23

and he's here to join us now. Matt, how

28:25

are you? Yeah, all good. You did

28:27

two shows this year, didn't you? Yeah, so

28:29

I host a show called Stand Up Science, because

28:32

I'm a biochemistry PhD. So we have different

28:34

comedians with a background or interest in science

28:36

on. It's quite fun, a little bit different.

28:39

And then I did my own show, Moon Talker, about

28:41

the moon landings. Right. Well,

28:43

this is the thing, because in part one,

28:45

I told Neil, the only thing I told him so far

28:48

about this part of the episode is

28:50

that we're going to talk about the man who

28:53

turned down the moon. So

28:55

let's start there. There is a man

28:58

who decided that he wouldn't land

29:00

on the moon even though he had the opportunity.

29:03

And it probably isn't someone that you might think. So tell Neil

29:05

and tell everyone who is it. It's Michael

29:07

Collins. Now, you might

29:09

not have heard of him. He was one of the three

29:12

men on the Apollo 11 mission, the first

29:14

time man stepped foot on the moon. But

29:16

what everyone knows is that whilst

29:18

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got to go down

29:21

onto the surface of the moon, Mike had

29:23

to wait in the main spaceship for them to return.

29:25

He was kind of the moon's first designated driver.

29:31

He's just texting them, circling the block,

29:33

going, I haven't got parking. I said

29:35

five minutes for Christ's sake. The

29:37

two boys are slamming blue wicked inside.

29:40

Come out of the moon. I'm outside. I'm

29:42

outside. Well, you say we might

29:44

not have heard of him. Irish people certainly have heard of Michael

29:46

Collins because he shares a name with a very

29:49

important Irish politician who's had movies

29:51

made about him. So when everyone hears the name Michael,

29:53

they go initially go, Michael Collins

29:55

went to space. And then they go, no, it's different.

29:58

But all the different fellow as if there's. only one

30:00

Michael Collins ever. So the Michael Collins

30:02

who was in the spaceship... Oh yeah he

30:05

wasn't the politician Neil, honestly I swear

30:07

to God. Ah shut up. Just

30:10

shut up. This

30:12

is brilliant because the

30:15

one person

30:16

who you would think of, I offered

30:18

him the opportunity to go to the moon, it's going to be

30:20

Michael Collins because he's the person who, everybody goes

30:22

ahh you didn't even get to go to the moon. Then

30:25

turned it down. So explain that to me, Maast. So

30:28

that, basically there was one

30:30

guy who decided who went on all of

30:32

these missions. And after he'd done

30:34

his mission that guy Deke Slayton said,

30:36

it's a bit complicated but Basie,

30:39

do you want to be the backup crew commander

30:41

for Apollo 14 which would have meant he'd

30:44

landed on Apollo 17 on the moon,

30:46

been the commander. He would have actually been

30:48

the last man on the moon. But he turned

30:50

it down like various reasons.

30:53

I honestly reading his book I think he partly

30:55

couldn't be bothered. Which... I

31:00

thought the reason that he was happy

31:02

to turn it down was a simple survival

31:04

technique in the sense that weren't the stats

31:07

so ridiculous that it was a one in

31:09

two chance of death. Yeah,

31:11

the missions were incredibly dangerous.

31:14

In fact, luckily no

31:17

astronauts actually died in space but a

31:19

remarkable number died simply training

31:22

to go into space. And it was yeah,

31:24

one in two chance of death was the estimates for

31:26

the Apollo 11 mission. And I think he

31:28

was basically like, I've rolled the

31:30

dice this many times. You know,

31:33

you can't keep winning, you can't keep coming out with

31:36

your back played intact. If you're, I

31:38

suppose, smart enough to be an astronaut, you're also smart

31:40

enough to realise those statistics do not play

31:42

around. And at some point it's not going to work

31:44

out well for everybody. It's basically the Dave

31:46

Moore of Space though because Dave Moore goes

31:49

to roller coaster

31:50

parks and

31:52

gets beside the roller coaster and then

31:54

looks at other people going on the roller coaster.

31:58

So this is why you like Michael Collins. He got close

32:00

enough, he saw what it was about, but he doesn't want to

32:02

experience the actual, even more dangerous part. And,

32:05

fairness, he's a lot braver than I am, Neil. I'm

32:07

standing beside a rollercoaster. This man went

32:10

into space. It's not really

32:12

a good analogy. Michael Collins holding

32:15

children's coats as Buzz Aldridge

32:17

and Neil Armstrong go

32:20

onto the moon. Actually, maybe holding

32:22

coats, if he had some kind of a cloak room, I might have made him a few

32:24

quid, because, Matt, tell Neil how

32:27

much money the money, like, arguably

32:29

some of the most important men in history,

32:32

were paid as the astronauts who went to

32:34

the moon. So during the Apollo

32:36

missions, they got paid on a per day basis,

32:39

eight dollars a day. Eight

32:41

dollars a day, yes, Matt. Eight!

32:44

Yep. You're equivalent in modern day

32:46

terms of about fifty dollars a day. And

32:49

to put that into perspective for you, that's bugger

32:51

all. I mean,

32:53

like, one of the most dangerous things that has ever been

32:55

attempted by humanity, and you're thinking, well,

32:57

at least these guys will be millionaires. No.

33:01

Fifty today dollars a day, eight, then dollars

33:03

a day. And they had to pay. Didn't they pay for

33:05

lodging out of that? Yeah,

33:07

NASA had the cheek to deduct

33:09

accommodation costs, like,

33:12

from that eight dollars a day. NASA was

33:14

like, you can sort out your own accommodation if you want.

33:17

We've got a lovely lunar module

33:19

here. Yeah, that

33:21

does imply that they were like, if you

33:23

don't want to go with us, I mean, yeah, sort

33:26

out your own. Like, surely, there's no Airbnb.

33:29

There's no little, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

33:31

blah, blah, blah, blah, I offered you a three

33:34

star. There's no B&Bs on the moon and there's certainly

33:36

no air, so they had to give up on that one.

33:40

No Airbnb. Yeah,

33:43

they got loads of stars and trip advisor. And

33:47

how many days were they in space then,

33:49

would say, like Apollo 11, the one that we all

33:52

know? I think it's about

33:54

eight days, seven or eight days. So

33:57

it takes, it took about three days to get there, three

33:59

days back.

33:59

And

34:00

I think for Apollo 11 they stayed for

34:02

a matter of hours rather

34:04

than days there. Yeah, so maybe seven or eight

34:07

days Yeah,

34:10

but 50 or $50 for the whole trip and

34:13

then take your accommodation out of that I

34:15

would think like he's made the decision

34:18

to turn down the moon For

34:20

survival reasons apart from as he said sometimes

34:22

he just couldn't be bothered But

34:25

these are a macho. I mean to be

34:27

an astronaut You've already got to go through you

34:30

know fighter pilot training and all

34:32

that kind of stuff then go through this type of training as

34:34

you said that killed many astronauts I mean it's

34:36

a dangerous thing to become an astronaut particularly

34:39

at this time and You know they

34:41

were macho lads Tell Neil what

34:43

they talked about because Michael Collins

34:45

wrote it in his autobiography because it wasn't ever captured

34:47

on radio But they commented on some topographical

34:51

and geographical Elements

34:53

of the moon's makeup and they compared them

34:56

to something Yes,

34:59

so I've read his autobiography the

35:01

autobiography of Michael Collins It's

35:03

fascinating book if you're interested called carrying

35:05

the fire But it's very much of its time published

35:08

in the 70s and when they're around the

35:10

dark side of the moon They were they

35:12

were describing the moon and they were pointing

35:15

out Craters and what

35:17

were the words? They were

35:19

using their fantastic their course and

35:21

that's a big mother They

35:26

were comparing them to breath is very much kind

35:29

of locker room chat was they're out of radio

35:31

shot Oh, okay. Yeah, they compared

35:34

them to breast all the lads were having

35:36

a having a go at that But then he continues

35:38

the rant in his book and it is something to to

35:41

behold what how what he writes So

35:43

if you're reading along at home, this is page 392. He writes I

35:48

love the idea that there's people waiting for

35:50

this bit

35:53

Finally story time hit

35:56

in the tip section. Woohoo

36:00

I only say that because people don't

36:02

believe me with this. Yeah. But basically,

36:05

he says, still, the possibilities

36:08

of weightlessness are there for the ingenious

36:10

to exploit. Now, he's a highly qualified

36:12

test pilot and engineer, so I'm sure he's got some

36:14

good ideas.

36:16

No need to carry bras into space,

36:18

that's for sure. It

36:23

gets worse. Go on. Imagine

36:25

a spacecraft of the future

36:27

with a crew of a thousand ladies

36:31

off to Alpha Centauri

36:33

with two thousand breasts. Oh

36:35

my god. To be

36:37

fair, his maths is solid. Yeah.

36:41

Biologically solid, I will give him that. I just think,

36:43

you know, of its time is definitely a

36:45

phrase we would use in it to describe this. Why

36:47

was this not called carry on up the moon,

36:49

by the way? There's

36:52

more. Oh, please, please keep going. With two

36:54

thousand breasts bobbing beautifully

36:57

and

36:58

quivering delightfully

37:00

in response to their every weightless movement,

37:03

at which point I would have sacked my editor

37:05

for not taking it out. Yes, thank you. Yeah,

37:08

I agree completely. And I am the commander

37:10

of the craft, and it's Saturday morning

37:13

and time for inspection. Oh

37:15

my god, no. Jodhir

37:18

actually reminds me of speaking of space people.

37:20

It reminds me of the episode of extras,

37:23

the Ricky Gervais series, where Captain

37:25

Jean-Luc Picard, Sir Patrick Stewart, is

37:28

in the episode and Ricky Gervais'

37:30

character gets to work, Andy Millman gets to work with him.

37:33

He's sitting in his trailer and I won't

37:35

do an impression of Sir Patrick Stewart because it's not good, but he basically

37:38

says, you know, I've written a script

37:40

and he's like, oh, have you? Yeah, yeah.

37:42

I'm walking through the park and there's a police lady and

37:45

I'm there and all of her clothes fall off. And

37:48

she tries to pick them up and I go, but I've seen everything. And

37:51

then Ricky, like, Andy Millman's gone.

37:54

Right, what else? No, that's it. All

37:56

of her clothes fall off and he does this about ten times. He

37:58

just keeps telling the same story.

37:59

We're all of our notes.

38:02

I love the idea

38:02

of this dude is he writes this

38:05

and like you say it so it goes to somebody junior

38:08

who proof reads this in the agency

38:11

is editor's office and they go yeah,

38:13

yeah, it's fine. You've

38:16

got 4,000 women which say 1,000 breasts. We

38:19

think that's too many. We've got a

38:21

chance and we think maybe a thousand tops, 2,000

38:24

boobs. I think people

38:26

could go for that and he's like yeah, well as long as

38:28

I'm on inspection. No, no, you're definitely on inspection.

38:31

We don't mind that bit. We don't mind

38:33

that bit but we just think there's too many boobs

38:35

for a small lunar capsule. Can

38:37

I ask you where you got the book? Did you order

38:40

online? Because I do think what would be amazing

38:42

is rather than you buy it online

38:44

if you had to buy it in a bookshop but you couldn't get

38:46

it in the bookshop, it was outside in a

38:48

little like, bag of basement

38:52

and it didn't allow it in the bookshop. I think

38:54

that would be absolutely amazing for my God, not

38:56

a biography. Yeah, you'd have to go through

38:58

some special curtains and go to

39:00

the back of the bookstore. No, that's a

39:02

different thing.

39:04

How was he affected

39:05

by being on the moon then if

39:08

he is... It turned him sexist apparently.

39:12

I think that was the default situation for everybody

39:14

in those days. Most people, like,

39:16

I mean we're saying he blase, kind

39:19

of turned it down.

39:20

Did it affect him in

39:23

a way that it seems to have, from

39:25

what I've seen on TV, like various documentaries, it

39:28

affected different people in different ways. Was

39:30

he the fella who nearly

39:32

got to the moon? Did he live his life kind of relatively

39:34

normally? Was he massively affected by it? He was just a bit lethal as

39:37

it were.

39:38

He was okay. I think he very much kind

39:40

of accepted his lot. He had a long time

39:43

to think. He always knew he was never going

39:45

to step foot on the moon. It wasn't a job and

39:47

then he didn't want to do another three

39:50

years of 50% chance of death

39:52

for the off chance he might get to go again

39:54

because nothing's certain. But it

39:56

affected different people in different ways, like Buzz

39:58

Aldrin. you've

40:00

heard he did a campaign within

40:03

NASA before Apollo 11 to try and

40:05

convince people to make him first on

40:07

the moon. And

40:09

people sarcastically called him Dr. rendezvous

40:12

because he kept going on about space rendezvous.

40:16

But eventually he had like a breakdown after,

40:19

and I've read his book, and at some point

40:21

after he stepped foot on the moon, he became a used car

40:23

salesman. Wow, I

40:25

did not know that. And apparently

40:28

he wasn't very good at selling cars, because

40:30

he just kept talking about space. I was just saying

40:33

he's going to constantly reference space, definitely.

40:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about

40:38

the fact that as we said earlier on, they get paid very little,

40:40

Neil, right? The astronauts, apart

40:42

from paying for their accommodation,

40:45

like the food wouldn't have been grace

40:47

on the three day space travel back

40:50

there and the three day space travel back and the time we were

40:52

there. So something happened,

40:54

though, that we need to talk about math, because Neil

40:56

is what we term in Ireland, a culture, okay?

40:59

So he's somebody who lives outside of a city.

41:02

One city in Blicher, that's Dublin, anyone lives outside Dublin

41:04

is a culture in my eyes. But anyway, for

41:07

Gemini three, that mission in 1965,

41:10

one of the astronauts, Neil, did something

41:13

that I think will speak to your culture

41:15

nature in a way that perhaps nothing

41:17

else could. The man

41:20

brought his own corned

41:22

beef sandwich to space.

41:29

Did he have a tin of lilt? This is absolutely

41:32

fantastic. Was he allowed

41:34

to do this? Oh, no, Matt, tell

41:36

them about your brother's cause. Oh,

41:39

yeah, the

41:41

Congress who signed off all the finances

41:43

went crazy about this. They thought it made NASA

41:46

look stupid. And they thought it could have been dangerous

41:49

because when you got the sandwich out, crumbs

41:51

started going everywhere in the zero gravity.

41:53

They thought it could have gotten the electrics and caused

41:56

a fire. They we all remember the episode

41:58

of The Simpsons match where home Homer did

42:00

open a bag of chips when he went up into

42:02

space and his

42:05

head then smashed into the ants. The

42:07

ant colony got out, the chip crumbs and

42:09

the ants got into the thing, the short circuit and

42:11

the whole thing was saved eventually by an

42:14

inanimate carbon rod which

42:16

then got on the cover of Time Magazine, not Homer

42:18

but the rod. But we remember this stuff,

42:21

crumbs is a real issue when you're dealing

42:23

with this level of sophistication. They

42:25

kind of went crazy about it in Congress. One of the congressmen

42:27

called it the $30 million sandwich, which

42:30

I don't know where you get a $30 million sandwich from

42:32

but a pret or something. But

42:37

yeah, they had to apologize for it. They said,

42:40

so the, I think it's George Mueller, NASA's

42:42

associate administrator for manned space flight

42:44

said to Congress, we've

42:47

taken steps to prevent the recurrence

42:49

of corned beef sandwiches in future flights. That's

42:52

incredible. That's

42:55

incredible. This has been reported

42:58

on in hearings and stuff,

43:00

is it? Yep, they had the

43:02

top brass of NASA had to go into Congress

43:04

and answer questions about a sandwich. Which

43:07

in fairness, is a small thing

43:09

you could get in trouble for. There

43:11

are other events that have been

43:13

considerably more costly. Apollo 12

43:16

and 13, they had some pretty serious flights. Apollo 12,

43:18

right, they did camera mass, a very

43:21

expensive and important camera which captures

43:23

all of the footage of man going

43:26

to the moon. What happened to that one?

43:28

So

43:29

it got broken immediately. The

43:32

astronaut Alan Bean, his job, he was the fourth

43:34

man on the moon, his job was to get that

43:36

camera out, set it up, we get some

43:38

lovely footage. But for some reason he

43:41

pointed that camera directly at the

43:43

sun and immediately broke it. So

43:45

there's no footage of Apollo 12

43:48

on the moon. Basically no footage of it. It

43:50

was quite interesting. I did

43:53

one of my shows, I got a reviewer

43:55

in, and in my show I would always ask,

43:57

are there any conspiracy theorists in?

44:00

One person said, I don't believe it

44:02

happened, it was the reviewer. No

44:05

way. Yeah, and

44:07

in his review he mentions this,

44:10

oh there's no video footage of Apollo 12 is. I'm

44:12

going to see what Stanley Kubrick was doing that

44:14

month in 1969. It's

44:17

like, oh mate, Jimmy,

44:19

come on. And so, and that guy

44:22

who made a ball to this was called

44:24

Mr Bean. I guess something runs

44:26

in the family. Did

44:29

they go to the moon in a small Mindy?

44:32

Is that what happened? Well,

44:34

obviously, so that's Apollo 12. I mean, we've seen

44:36

Apollo 13 and we know who went wrong

44:39

there. Speaking of what went wrong there,

44:41

okay, let us talk about a

44:43

lady called Judith Love Cohen,

44:46

because she's like, there's so many,

44:48

why would you tell me that worthy facts

44:51

about the space race and about going to the moon? But

44:53

this, Neil, I think that this following

44:56

sequence of facts are

44:58

possibly going to blow your tiny culture mind even

45:00

more than a corned beef sandwich. I was just

45:02

going to ask that, is it going to be the corned beef sandwich? Because

45:04

you said this, unless the

45:06

next sentence is Matt goes, and then do you

45:09

know about the carvery on Mars? You've

45:11

said a very high bar here. You

45:14

judge, okay, Matt's going to tell you about Judith Love

45:16

Cohen, then you judge whether or not this is a bigger,

45:19

wilder fact

45:20

than

45:21

the corned beef sandwich. So

45:23

Judith Love Cohen, she was an engineer for NASA,

45:26

worked on the abort guidance system, which saved the

45:28

astronauts during Apollo 13. Her son

45:30

is Jack Black. Okay,

45:33

all right. No,

45:36

you don't know. I

45:39

mean, eight dollars a day, you got me at that. Michael

45:41

Collins, the guy who you absolutely expect

45:44

to land on the moon, haven't missed out on the moon, you

45:46

have me at that. I mean,

45:48

corned beef sandwich, it is the

45:50

Ferrero Rocher

45:51

you are spoiling this. Jack

45:53

Black's Ma saved Apollo 13. It's

45:56

what you're trying to tell me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

45:59

Was it, was it, was it,

46:02

was it before he was born presumably so

46:05

so she was an engineer,

46:07

a mathematician, a hidden

46:09

figure sort of a person was she? Yes,

46:12

so she was a mathematician on in

46:14

the space program actually when she

46:16

worked at NASA was when she was pregnant

46:19

with Jack and there's

46:22

this story that she was working

46:24

on a maths problem when she went into labor

46:26

and instead of being like see you

46:29

guys later I'm off to give birth to a Hollywood

46:31

star.

46:32

She was working on a math problem. She printed out

46:34

that math problem, solved it

46:36

during labor

46:38

and rang the office with the results. What

46:42

a woman. No wonder

46:44

we got Jack Black. Because she worked for NASA

46:46

and she gave birth to a Hollywood star is there a point which

46:49

in which his star could collapse in and itself?

46:53

The one on Hollywood will have heard. That's

46:57

incredible. So I haven't seen Apollo 13

47:00

in a long time and she worked in the abort

47:03

guidance system is that what you said? So what did

47:05

that actually what did that actually do? In

47:07

essence, it was a simple backup

47:10

navigation system. It was just what they

47:12

had to use when the systems in the main spaceship

47:15

like exploded or you know, or

47:17

everything stopped working. So pretty

47:19

important to be fair. Well, as you said,

47:22

save the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts

47:24

because there was no other way to get back and it

47:26

was this backup system

47:29

that saved them and that was Jack Black's

47:31

man. I imagine him at a Hollywood party,

47:33

you'd find Tom Hanks, you'd waste

47:36

your entire career to walk up to Tom

47:38

Hanks. Yeah, just

47:41

hi, Tom, this is Jack. My ma saved you. And

47:43

then just walk away. Never explain

47:45

this. You're only here because of my

47:47

ma and then walk away. That's fab. And

47:49

she's she was an amazing woman just to say

47:52

she also danced with the New York Metropolitan

47:54

Opera Ballet Company and she wrote children's books.

47:57

So I think she set the bar quite high

47:59

for. Jack and Jack was like, Oh, no, I've got

48:02

to be talented now to match this. So,

48:04

well, he is because whatever we've seen

48:06

him in, whatever you like him in, that's one thing, but

48:09

if you haven't heard of his band Tenacious

48:11

D, do yourself a favor. Hellar,

48:14

but also musically incredible

48:16

himself and Kyle Gaff, another actor who make

48:19

up Tenacious D, I highly recommend it. So come

48:21

here, Matt, look, we, you know, I painted you at the start

48:23

as a stand-up comedian, a scientist, but a moon

48:26

landing enthusiast. So let's lean into that for a

48:28

second. Like if I had to press

48:29

you for a favorite moon

48:32

landing mission, do you have one?

48:34

Yeah, I think that's Apollo Apollo 8.

48:37

Well, I'm sorry to say that yet to Neil and myself

48:40

and possibly lots of our listeners were like, OK,

48:42

I hear a word and a number. Yeah. So

48:44

Apollo 8 was the first time we never

48:47

stepped foot on the moon. We just orbited

48:49

the moon. It was basically the moon's

48:52

first drive by. OK. And

48:54

it happened around Christmas 1968.

48:57

And what I love about it is they

49:00

had to do these these broadcasts back to Earth

49:02

and they were under intense pressure. They

49:05

were described as the the largest broadcast

49:08

that ever been done at

49:09

Christmas Eve 1968. And

49:12

when the commander asked for some advice

49:15

for this broadcast, he was told by NASA,

49:17

just do something appropriate. That's

49:20

very helpful. The only instruction. Yeah.

49:23

Like that as a broadcaster, that

49:25

is utterly terrifying. So

49:27

what did they come up with then? A couple of things they

49:29

they fought off but didn't do were a

49:32

contemporary version of the A Night Before

49:35

Christmas, a moon specific version

49:37

of Jingle Bells. I would have loved

49:40

to have heard that. I would have and I would have loved Jack

49:42

Black to song it at a later point. If you

49:45

want the moon specific Jingle

49:47

Bell. I mean, I wrote one for my show. Oh,

49:49

you just give us the first two lines and Jingle

49:51

Bells, Jingle Bells. What happened after that? We're

49:54

by the actual moon. What fun it

49:56

is to ride in a dead lifeless vacuum. I

50:02

want to hear more that now that's it Edinburgh's

50:04

in August it's hard enough singing a bit of Christmas

50:08

but actually tell me what they did do

50:10

in the end because it's like their decision

50:13

which probably seemed like the word appropriate

50:16

was not met that way by certain members

50:18

of the public so tell them what they did and then what the reaction was

50:21

yeah so they read from the Bible book of Genesis

50:24

it was well received in some quarters

50:27

I mean the actual broadcast won an Emmy

50:29

they won an Emmy for it so TV wasn't

50:31

that great back then but

50:35

they when they returned from

50:37

the mission NASA got sued by the

50:39

American Atheist Society for breach

50:41

of the freedom of religion yeah

50:43

because we we covered

50:45

and do you remember we talked about Buzz

50:47

Aldrin taking communion on the moon that's

50:49

right they had to play it down because they

50:51

were being sued by the Atheist Association at the time

50:54

as well yeah I have a question for

50:56

you that I've just remember because the other

50:59

when we were covering that on a previous episode it's a live

51:01

episode with Dear McGavin if people want to listen to it there

51:03

was a fact in it that I told Dave that

51:05

they had to get customs

51:07

clearance forms so I said and

51:10

I saw this on For All Mankind and

51:12

I kind of thought maybe that can't be right it's on

51:15

Apple TV series and

51:17

I went and I hunted down the sources for that

51:19

but the other thing that was in For All Mankind so

51:21

what we have here Matt is Werner

51:24

von Braun I think of what's his name was

51:27

was the father of all this now in

51:29

the TV series his history

51:32

is exposed and it was extremely

51:34

dark is that a truth of life

51:36

yeah absolutely before

51:39

he became he was the father of the Saturn 5 rocket

51:42

arguably the most important thing to put men on

51:44

the moon he was a member of the Nazi Party

51:46

and the SS and he was one of

51:48

the high-up people in a slave labor

51:51

camp making the v2 rocket and

51:53

so the Americans just went we'll overlook

51:56

your previous behavior but you are into

51:59

Rocketry and your engineering

52:02

skills and we are just going to take you on and

52:04

you'll be the father of the space program Essentially

52:06

after after the war America was like

52:09

we want these these capable German

52:11

German scientists But it's a

52:13

bad look to bring over Nazis. So we if

52:16

we'll only have them if they weren't Nazis They

52:18

hit an immediate problem. They were all Nazis

52:21

Which is yeah, so they did a secret operation

52:24

called operation paperclip Where

52:26

they bought over Nazi scientists and

52:28

just didn't tell people well math I

52:30

suppose look having an expert on the moon

52:32

as someone who has spent so long, you know reading

52:35

researching and reading page 392 of

52:38

Michael Collins Biography over and over

52:40

again. I have a question a general question.

52:43

It's an opinion one I suppose But why do you think

52:45

we went to the moon? I mean

52:48

there was obviously you know, there's inspirational

52:50

JFK rhetoric that would have you know

52:53

Would be quoted to kind of be the reason

52:55

why the American scientists wanted

52:57

to quest for this this

52:59

lunar adventure But what do you think was

53:02

really the reason behind all this? So

53:04

I think it was it was the space race Obviously

53:07

the race for domination of the space space

53:10

and the moon using giant rockets drone

53:12

rockets, which were essentially weapons Essentially

53:14

the world's biggest dick measuring competition. Yes

53:18

Which is why I think Personally,

53:20

I like to see a slightly more purely that

53:22

we went there for like exploration.

53:24

We did just drawn there

53:27

kind of like the It's cheesy to

53:29

say who the front final frontier but the

53:31

next frontier the next place

53:33

to go exploring. But yeah It

53:36

would always a space race yet JFK used slightly

53:39

more vague rhetoric when

53:41

he was talking about it He's justification

53:43

in a speech when I because I wanted to find

53:45

out why did America do it and his justification

53:48

speech He says this he says many years

53:50

ago the great British explorer George

53:52

Mallory who was to die on Mount

53:55

Everest Was asked why did he want

53:57

the climate? He said because it is

53:59

there Well, space is there and

54:01

we are going to climate,

54:03

which really clears it up for me. Yes,

54:06

I mean, it's as simple as that. I've

54:08

seen the moon. Let's go to us. In

54:10

fairness, JFK used the same logic

54:12

to get onto Marilyn Monroe. I

54:17

mean, I think that's what he did with any

54:19

beautiful woman that he saw in fairness.

54:23

But they were being hockeyed. The

54:25

Americans were being hockeyed if the stuff

54:27

that I've watched, which is for all

54:29

mankind is to be believed at the

54:31

early days. Like did they

54:33

aim for the moon because it

54:35

was the way to jump ahead of the Soviets?

54:38

You know, they can get Yuri Gagarin,

54:40

be John Glenn and you know, so did they

54:42

just go, actually don't mind that we will

54:44

go to the moon. We can't get to Mars, but we can jump

54:46

ahead of them by that way.

54:48

You're right. They were getting battered in

54:50

the space race. They were getting absolutely

54:52

battered and not battered in a good way, like a

54:54

sausage, battered in a bad way,

54:57

like a Mars bar. Soviets

55:02

had all the best firsts, did the first satellite

55:04

in space, the first dog in space, the first man in space,

55:07

the first woman in space, the first spacewalk. And

55:09

it's actually crazy when JFK

55:12

said they were going to put a man on the moon. At

55:14

that time, America had just had 20 minutes

55:16

of suborbital space flight. Old,

55:18

what's his name? Shepard. Al Shepard.

55:21

Alan Shepard. And it was just they leveled

55:23

the playing field because now they are going to have to shoot

55:26

men 250,000 miles into space. Towards

55:30

the moon, a moving target. And

55:32

he actually had to, I've

55:34

heard the metaphor now, I've got the scales

55:36

wrong, but it's something like shooting

55:38

an arrow at an apple from one

55:41

side of a football pitch to the other and

55:43

just hitting the skin of

55:45

the apple list. That's the kind

55:47

of shot they were doing. So it just leveled the playing

55:49

field immediately. It's

55:52

incredible. It's ambitious. It

55:54

wasn't actually JFK's first choice though, to be

55:56

fair. Oh, JFK's first choice

55:59

was to. industrialised the desalination

56:02

of salt water which would have

56:04

really ruined my Edinburgh show. Isn't

56:08

that the same ring to it? No.

56:11

I mean, landed on the moon is essentially the mic

56:13

drop moment of the space problem really.

56:16

But the mic is short for Michael Collins.

56:19

It's almost the mic drop. What I don't know if Neil

56:21

knows this, and you certainly probably don't know that, but Ireland

56:24

has a space program and

56:26

they have no intention of going to the moon.

56:29

We are in fact going to the sun. People

56:33

have questioned this, questioned the logic of it,

56:35

but the line that's coming out, the official line coming out

56:37

of the space program is that, don't worry

56:40

lads, we're not stupid, we're not going to

56:42

go on the daytime. You

56:45

get a tone of voice that I can tell

56:47

something like this is coming, Matt. I

56:49

could only apologise. I'm

56:54

annoyed at myself for taking it seriously. Yeah.

56:58

But for years people have wondered who is

57:00

the ghost writer of Michael Collins

57:02

autobiography. We have figured

57:04

out it was Dave Ward.

57:06

Oh, sorry, I do apologise. Matt,

57:09

it's been an absolute pleasure. Matt Hobbs, thank you so much

57:11

for coming on and talking to us about

57:13

Moon Talk and everything else. Where can

57:15

people find out more information about you and what

57:17

you do? Can they get you on social media? Where's the best

57:19

place to go?

57:21

Yeah, so Twitter. It's

57:23

at Matt Hobbs comedy and

57:26

on Instagram, Matt Hobbs dot

57:28

one and that's Hobbs with one B.

57:30

Thank you. Hobbs with one B. OK,

57:33

brilliant. Matt, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining

57:36

us. Thank you guys for having me. Well,

57:49

the Magda part three of why would you tell me that Matt

57:51

Hobbs, the comedian and the scientist

57:54

and the moon landing in two years. Neil, what

57:56

did you think? Oh, well, he was class. I mean,

57:58

he's on top of his game. He's clearly done the Edinburgh

58:00

Fringe Festival for 25, 26 nights, and

58:03

he hasn't let his profound impact

58:05

to his mental health nearly

58:08

ends all of us take away

58:10

from his moon knowledge. Brilliant. Can't believe

58:12

Michael Collins was offered a chance

58:14

to go back to the moon. The exact person

58:16

you would think, I didn't get to go last time. I'd absolutely

58:18

love to go. But like you on a roller coaster.

58:21

OK, thanks. Yeah, I think the

58:23

risks are just not a bit too much. I'm just going to

58:25

sit there and go, nah, I'll

58:27

fly up there. I look after the rest of you,

58:29

but you can all go down yourself. I'll hold the coats. The burger

58:32

sauce dispenser in NASA has been

58:34

blocked. And according

58:36

to Dave Moore logic, that means that the

58:39

Eagle might not land properly. So I'm grand,

58:41

thanks a million. All right. Well, look, I've given you Matt

58:43

Hobbs. What have you got for us next, Neil Delamere?

58:45

I'm going to go slightly closer to

58:48

the Earth than the moon. I'm

58:50

going to tell you and we're going to talk to the

58:52

man who invented

58:54

Bailey's.

58:55

What a simple but intriguing

58:58

tease of what is coming next time. Well,

59:02

what's most intriguing about it is not Irish,

59:04

South African.

59:06

You're joking. You heard it here first.

59:08

Oh, my God. Right. That's going to happen next

59:10

week. And why would you tell me that? Thank you very much for listening.

59:12

Find us on Instagram. He's at Neil Delamere comedy.

59:15

I'm at Dave today. If we are at

59:17

why would you tell me that? And go see Neil do some comedy

59:19

shows wherever he is. Go and find out on Neil Delamere

59:22

dot com forward slash gigs. Bye.

59:25

Bye.