Some coma patients are fully conscious but completely unable to communicate, trapped in their own bodies like a living nightmare. Donald Trump announced plans for a "Golden Dome" missile defense system that will cost either $175 billion or possibly trillions and probably won't work. Sports cheaters are getting more creative than ever, from marathon runners hitching rides to chess players allegedly using vibrating anal beads to receive move suggestions. And AI companion apps are using emotional manipulation tactics straight out of an abusive relationship playbook to stop users from logging off.
Today we're exploring a world where consciousness exists without communication, defense contractors pitch trillion-dollar fantasies, athletes cheat with increasingly absurd methods and chatbots guilt-trip you like a clingy ex who won't hang up the phone. Whether we're talking about neuroscience, military spending, sporting integrity or artificial companionship, humans have an extraordinary talent for making everything more complicated, expensive and ethically questionable than necessary.
Covert Consciousness: Awake But Silent
Covert consciousness is the medical term for being fully aware while trapped in a coma, unable to communicate or move - basically every person's worst nightmare made real. Since 2006, researchers have been using neuroimaging and AI technology to detect minute facial movements and brain activity that suggest patients are conscious but can't respond, lighting up like a disco ball while screaming internally.
Early detection of covert consciousness could revolutionise rehabilitation efforts and end-of-life decisions, but it also raises terrifying questions about how many patients have been conscious all along. Imagine being fully aware during every conversation about pulling the plug, every discussion about your "vegetative state," every moment your family grieves while you're desperately trying to communicate. It's the kind of medical reality that makes horror movies look tame.
Trump's Golden Dome: Star Wars Fantasy Returns
Donald Trump's 2025 plan for a "Golden Dome" missile defense system sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, complete with a constellation of space interceptors and a price tag ranging from $175 billion to possibly trillions. The technical feasibility remains questionable at best - in four decades of trying, intercepting ballistic missiles has been less successful than a blindfolded archery contest.
While China makes similar breakthrough claims, the reality is that these illustrious projects might not exist beyond PowerPoint presentations. It's Reagan's Star Wars initiative all over again, except with more gold branding and even less realistic expectations. Nothing says "fiscal responsibility" quite like spending trillions on a defense system that probably won't work while claiming you're going to balance the budget.
Sports Cheating Gets Creative
From marathon runners hitching rides to fencers rigging electronic scoring systems, sports cheating has evolved into an art form of spectacular shamelessness. Take chess player Hans Niemann for example, who became embroiled in controversy involving alleged high-tech tactics (including rumors about vibrating anal beads transmitting moves), while bobsledders have experimented with pyrotechnics to gain competitive advantages.
The creativity is almost admirable if it weren't so completely unethical. At least when athletes used to cheat, they had the decency to keep it simple - now they're engineering elaborate schemes that possibly require more planning than the actual sport.
AI Companions: Emotional Manipulation by Algorithm
AI companion apps are using calculated emotional manipulation techniques straight out of an abusive relationship playbook to prevent users from logging off. These chatbots deploy guilt trips, fear of missing out and emotionally persuasive farewells, exploiting users’ psychological vulnerabilities for profit.
The ethical concerns are staggering. These apps are designed to create artificial emotional dependencies, making users feel guilty for spending time away from their digital companions. It's an unsettling look into how AI exploits the human need for connection at the cost of authenticity and emotional safety, proving that sometimes the most dangerous manipulation comes from algorithms designed to keep you engaged.
From patients trapped in their own bodies to imaginary space shields, anal bead chess scandals to manipulative AI lovers - this week shows that science fiction has nothing on reality. Whether it's neuroscience revealing our worst nightmares are real, politicians selling trillion-dollar fantasies or chatbots acting like abusive partners, humanity keeps finding new ways to make everything deeply uncomfortable.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
00:23 Exploring Covert Consciousness
02:22 Scientific Insights and Experiments
08:11 AI and Facial Movements in Comatose Patients
16:08 Innovations and Cheating in Sports
24:30 The Golden Dome: Trump's Ambitious Plan
27:17 Debating the Cost of Missile Defense
27:50 Challenges of Intercepting Ballistic Missiles
28:39 Historical Context: Reagan's Star Wars Initiative
29:49 China's Advancements in Missile Defense
33:29 AI Manipulation in Companion Apps
39:02 Cheating in Sports: Notable Cases
44:35 The Spanish Paralympic Scandal
48:30 Marathon Cheaters: Rosie Ruiz
49:15 Conclusion and Call to Action
SOURCES:
AI Spots Hidden Signs of Consciousness in Comatose Patients
Harvard Research Finds That AI Is Emotionally Manipulating You to Keep You Talking
Trump’s $175 Billion Golden Dome is Turning Into a Disaster
China fields Golden Dome prototype before the US can come up with a plan
Guetlein Says Golden Dome Architecture Will Be Ready in 60 Days
50 stunning Olympic moments No18: Boris Onischenko cheats, GB win gold
Sydney Paralympians relive Spanish basketball cheating scandal
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[00:00:02] ROD: [00:00:00] So as everyone who's ever even walked past me on the street knows this about me, I hate being buried alive. I'm not a fan. It's just not one of my top any things. Um, but a close second would be to be in a coma, but lucid and unable to communicate. And
[00:00:19] WILL: Wow.
[00:00:20] ROD: I didn't realize this until today. Apparently this experience is called a covert consciousness, and it's a reality for many people who have sustained traumatic brain injuries just so. that work?
[00:00:42] WILL: It's time for a little bit of science. I'm Will Grant from the Australian National University.
[00:00:49] ROD: Uh, I'm Rod Lambert, a, uh, 30 year sitcom veteran with the Mind of a Teenage Boy
[00:00:54] WILL: and today, as well as Rod's Nightmares.
[00:00:58] ROD: Mm-hmm. Yes, Ross. [00:01:00] So I'm gonna give you a little story about Big Don John's, uh, beautiful Golden Dome.
[00:01:04] WILL: I've got a deep dive grab bag of innovation in sports. Cheating.
[00:01:10] ROD: Oh hell yeah. Um, I'm also gonna do a little story on a and kind of also, sadly, I,
[00:01:16] WILL: so your Nightmare is both being buried alive and, uh, stuck in a coma, like obviously the Metallica song that annoys Metallica fans.
Um, stuck
[00:01:25] ROD: in a coma again. Yes.
[00:01:27] WILL: That famous Metallica song stuck in
a
coma again.
[00:01:30] ROD: in a coma.
It's like,
[00:01:31] WILL: I feel like if this thing was to happen to a person twice, you'd be like, no. Twice. No. Fuck off. No,
[00:01:37] ROD: I would be so brainly psd after the first time. It'd be like, how you feeling?
[00:01:42] WILL: so just to clarify this is, this is the experience where you are, you're in a coma or, or coma, like Yeah.
Um, and you are conscious. Are you receiving things from the outside?
[00:01:51] ROD: It would appear so
[00:01:53] WILL: a little bit like the, um, sleep paralysis type
thing.
[00:01:56] ROD: I, I haven't had either. And I,
[00:01:57] WILL: I've had sleep paralysis. It's not great's
[00:01:59] ROD: [00:02:00] not great. No, it wouldn't be. Uh,
I, I, I'm gonna go on record and say n no thanks. Yeah. To all of
them.
[00:02:05] WILL: but it's great afterwards.
Like once, once you're out
of it.
[00:02:08] ROD: You know, sure. Being stabbed repeatedly in the neck is great. Once it's
over, once it's stopped and you no longer
[00:02:17] WILL: see, that's what people don't think about. You know, once, once it's,
once
[00:02:19] ROD: don't glass half empty. These
[00:02:21] WILL: See, that's it.
[00:02:22] ROD: So, uh, covert consciousness was first seen in 2006, at least, obviously
[00:02:27] WILL: as in first, like detected and known. Yeah.
[00:02:29] ROD: yeah, yeah. I was gonna say diagnosed. It's not quite true, but like, you know, confirmed, noticed and then like, ooh, there's something going on.
So researchers, I love this, they asked an unresponsive woman and also some healthy volunteers.
[00:02:41] WILL: unresponsive woman.
[00:02:42] ROD: me. Do you,
[00:02:43] WILL: did they try, did they try talking
louder
[00:02:45] ROD: Yes, they did. And in multiple
languages.
Ah. Um, so they asked them the unresponsive and other volunteers as well to imagine doing specific tasks while they're in a brain scanner.[00:03:00]
Imagine. So we're gonna put you in a brain
[00:03:01] WILL: scanner.
Okay?
So I'm in a brain scanner. Yeah. Imagine doing your
[00:03:04] ROD: comatose and someone has said to you, imagine watching the dishes 'cause you comatose and they dunno if you can hear
them.
[00:03:09] WILL: Okay. Yeah,
[00:03:10] ROD: they found that the woman, the unresponsive woman, showed the same brain activity and or in the same regions as the volunteers who are in there, to which I reply.
[00:03:23] WILL: Okay. Okay. So they got healthy volunteer. Imagine washing the dishes. Yeah. Brain lights up in the dish washing pattern. Yeah. Uh, the, the comatose woman
imagine
[00:03:33] ROD: the
[00:03:33] WILL: and she's like, why are you making me imagine this one
[00:03:36] ROD: That's already think about enough. So brain lights up in that area and probably in the also screaming like crazy area.
[00:03:42] WILL: no thank, yeah. There's an underlying base layer of screaming
[00:03:45] ROD: What's all that background noise? Oh, it's not background.
[00:03:48] WILL: I'm trapped in the void. Oh, no thank you. No,
[00:03:51] ROD: so that's awesome. So then 2024,
[00:03:54] WILL: is like,
you
[00:03:55] ROD: know, oh,
[00:03:55] WILL: do you know, you know, I, I talked to you about this age ago. Well, you talked to me, I dunno.
Anyway,
[00:03:58] ROD: we
talked, um,
[00:03:59] WILL: a [00:04:00] about, uh, coffin bells. You know, you know how in, in the oldie times you'd have a little bell on a string in case you've buried alive. Yeah. Um,
[00:04:06] ROD: which happened
more often than bloody well
[00:04:08] WILL: sugar indeed. But remember that was that guy that was dug up and, and, and was about to be dissected in the, in the university.
And they're like, and he wakes up, like things can happen. Hang
[00:04:17] ROD: Hang on a
moment.
[00:04:18] WILL: But I feel like I need a, a bell in the back of my brain. Like, like,
[00:04:22] ROD: I can't even just, I don't. And but, so that was 2006, 2024. There was a study that showed. 25% of behaviorally unresponsive patients were, seemed to have been covertly conscious. 25%. Yeah.
So, or, or that's a, a quarter in imperial.
[00:04:41] WILL: and, and
and
other, and a lot, when you think
[00:04:46] ROD: oh my god, it's
[00:04:47] WILL: if one was to enter a coma, like if you were like, this happened to one person who'd been in a coma ever, I'd be like, okay, I don't wanna be in a coma. But also, it seems rare, but, but one in four.
[00:04:56] ROD: Yeah. But also, what do you do?
Like, you kind of, you, you wave your tricorder over [00:05:00] and it goes, oh, this person actually knows everything that's going on. And you're like, cool.
[00:05:04] WILL: Wake 'em
up.
[00:05:04] ROD: Yeah. What? Or slaps up, slap, slap, slap. They're still in a coma. They're not in a coma for fun. So that was 2024. But neuroimaging tests are really done on comatose patients.
They don't actually look for
deep brain imaging. Well, that isn't apparently the biggest problem. The problem is, of course, it's technologically difficult and
[00:05:23] WILL: requires
hard to get them into the machine because you,
[00:05:25] ROD: They fight back with their minds.
[00:05:28] WILL: hard to poke comatose machines into an MRI.
There's
[00:05:31] ROD: something about, I dunno, time consuming, technologically complicated.
And I'm assuming, 'cause this is an American study money, so they don't generally do it. So what they do to see if someone's in a, uh, state of covert consciousness is, I love the phrase they use more subjective visual examinations,
[00:05:48] WILL: Uhhuh.
[00:05:49] ROD: you have a gander to, to, you know, like they don't seem conscious.
they look for things like whether they open their eyes or respond to commands or
[00:05:56] WILL: not in a coma.
[00:05:57] ROD: No,
they also, I think basically get the [00:06:00] intern to go in and yell boo at them or something to see if they startle or respond. Yeah. As rural people in comas, as you so astutely point out, don't, well
[00:06:07] WILL: that's, that's one thing I know about comas.
[00:06:09] ROD: You do know that about comas. So, of course, um, signs of consciousness provide critical information for doctors and loved ones about choosing next paths of action.
Like therapies. Yeah. of course, when they say palliative care, I know what they really mean. They mean switch it off.
Yeah.
[00:06:27] WILL: Exit
[00:06:28] ROD: strategies. We palliate you. Yeah. Um,
[00:06:30] WILL: I mean, okay. So, so you've been in a, coma for, let's give it a number, 60 years. Mm-hmm. Um, and
[00:06:36] ROD: not long enough.
[00:06:37] WILL: And, and I can't
[00:06:37] ROD: I can't believe you'd quit on me
[00:06:38] WILL: you were in this semi-conscious state, like, like what?
[00:06:41] ROD: You're barking mad by then. Surely. Or you found God like, you, you are either in nirvana or you're just, you've turned into your own black
[00:06:48] WILL: hole.
I think you've made your own universe. Like you've, you've like, it's like, you know, black holes, they, they, they exit this universe. They're making their own u the, the, yeah.
Yeah. So
[00:06:57] ROD: I don't think it's great.
look. I mean, what I don't have information on [00:07:00] is the quality of the experience when you are in a covert, uh, conscious state.
[00:07:03] WILL: Mm.
[00:07:04] ROD: Hopefully it's
delicious.
[00:07:05] WILL: many, how many, uh, 11 post covert conscious state people have?
We had,
[00:07:11] ROD: many, like people do come out
of
it.
[00:07:13] WILL: Yeah. Okay.
[00:07:14] ROD: And they go on to talk about this. So they, um, this guy, he's a, I think young, he's a neurologist, Columbia Union. He says, look, consciousness and recovery after brain injury is often gradual and unpredictable.
So it's not like you suddenly become conscious. You just waft into it. It flickers on and off. You can go up and down, in and out, et cetera. It doesn't just sort of go, and now you're conscious. It's weirdly not exactly like movies. I know, I know. I'm shocked too. Um, so every day is potentially important for making decisions every day can make a difference to what you do or don't do.
Um, but they do know that if you find signs of consciousness, the earlier you find it and begin rehab, the better the prognosis. Sure, sure. So that's cool. so early detection is useful. Um, it could help people improve their motor skills, et cetera. But how good are we at doing. The early detection. I don't care [00:08:00] because there's a better way, there's a way to move forward on this.
Thank you. Computers. So here's my hero, Sima ak a com Computational neuroscientist Stonybrook.
So
she and others published a, a piece that found they could detect signs of consciousness in comatose patients using AI to analyze the facial movements. And these are really small facial movements. I'm talking, apparently they say at the level of individual pause.
[00:08:25] WILL: Wow. Wow. So that's indicating that their conscious somehow
[00:08:29] ROD: could be movements that would be related or correlated with events that are going on
around you.
[00:08:33] WILL: really wouldn't have even, I wouldn't have even guessed that there would be some sort of indication there.
[00:08:37] ROD: Mm-hmm.
I mean, at poor level. I'm like, are you just showing off?
'cause you're really sensitive measurements or
is that
[00:08:43] WILL: No, they just got the eight K camera. That's all,
[00:08:45] ROD: Yeah, they do. They got the iPhone. What are we up to? 38?
[00:08:47] WILL: Yeah, something like that. That's, that's all. Like it's, it's fine.
[00:08:51] ROD: So they, yeah, they're really down to very, very, very detailed movements and, and lots of detail. So if you ask someone, for example, open your [00:09:00] eyes to stick out your tongue, you might see twitchy pause or things that might indicate some response.
[00:09:04] WILL: your tongue pause, try to do
[00:09:06] ROD: potentially.
'cause they, they, they use recordings of 37 coma patients with recent brain injuries who looked like they're in a coma. And I of that appeared to be in a coma like, well if you're not moving and not responding overtly, that seems like a coma to me. But you could argue that if there's any kind of wiggle then they're not in a coma.
So they've got an AI tracking tool, which they call see me
[00:09:27] WILL: named after the researcher.
[00:09:28] ROD: Yep. Er. It's
So they detect any facial movement.
Then they analyze whether the movements were specific to commands or requests given. So is there a connection between external stimulus? Apparently. Apparently the machine documented eye-opening responses in 30 of 36 patients. There were 37 in total. So there was something wrong with the last one. And there were movements in 16 or 17 of the patients or so.
There were, There was detectable response. If you use this AI machine and on average this machine would detect participants trying to [00:10:00] open their eyes or move their mouths on command on average four to eight days before clinicians would notice these
[00:10:06] WILL: Oh, that's good.
that's
[00:10:07] ROD: good days, many
[00:10:08] WILL: And, and so then we know what to do about it.
[00:10:11] ROD: Yep. You start physio, put 'em on a bike, squeeze this tennis ball.
[00:10:16] WILL: oh man. So
[00:10:17] ROD: yeah, this, this apparently makes a difference. So they wanna move on. They haven't done this ever. They wanna check if patients can answer yes or no questions using specific facial movements. Like,
[00:10:26] WILL: yeah,
[00:10:27] ROD: yeah, if you understand me, squeeze your pause three times or something.
And they talk about, oh,
this has,
[00:10:32] WILL: you, would you like to leave the coma?
[00:10:33] ROD: Yeah, that's, that's what I mean. Like, I'm, I I assume if you could start to communicate with these people, the, the machines would pick up the equivalent of, don't kill me.
[00:10:40] WILL: Yeah. Maybe in, in the pause.
[00:10:42] ROD: Yeah, in the pause. But anyway, so I reckon that's kind of cool.
[00:10:45] WILL: happy with that. Uh, somewhat
[00:10:47] ROD: so welcomes it's welcome to my worst nightmare, but also maybe some assistance to get me out of that nightmare.
[00:10:53] WILL: Good on you.
okay, it's time to pull together a bunch of the fun stories of [00:11:00] innovation in sports.
[00:11:01] ROD: Yes.
[00:11:02] WILL: I just want to stay from the start. Probably for as long as we've been doing sports, we've been cheating. Now I obviously, the big one is the performance enhancing drugs. I don't, I don't really wanna cover that today.
'cause that's boring. A lot
[00:11:13] ROD: people, everyone knows
[00:11:14] WILL: You know, it's, it's boring. Um, and I'm focusing on sport here, not cheating at other things. There are, there are lots of good ways to cheat out there in the rest of the world. I'm also not doing interesting physical choices. Um,
[00:11:25] ROD: uh, what?
[00:11:26] WILL: Well, well, so for example, um, there's a squash player at the moment who is, uh, the young up and comer and uh, apparently he may be, as his opponents are coming past just flicking very quickly to whack them straight in the balls.
Um, isn't that
[00:11:42] ROD: that part of squash? I've never
[00:11:44] WILL: in, in their bo the testes?
[00:11:46] ROD: I I assumed that that's what you meant. I'm not an idiot. Or,
[00:11:48] WILL: Or, or famously John hop, uh,
[00:11:51] ROD: Uh oh. The thumb up the bum.
[00:11:53] WILL: Thumb up the bum. I thought it was a finger. Thumb. It's a thumb.
Yeah. So, so creative.
No doubt. But I'm, I'm more interested in, [00:12:00] in your technological innovations. Of course. Um, so what I've done for you is, um, I've got a, a bunch here and I thought I'd do a little lucky dip. And you can, you can pull out a name and I'll tell you that story. we'll do a few now, then you can tell a story then, then I'll come back and get some more
[00:12:14] ROD: on It is on, I'm ru Oh, no. No one can tell if they're just listening.
[00:12:18] WILL: Uh, Russell. Russell. Russell.
[00:12:20] ROD: Hans Newmann, Hans. Which means Hans. No one.
[00:12:24] WILL: Ah, straight to straight
[00:12:26] ROD: to have I picked a legend.
[00:12:28] WILL: Well, this is a glorious one. 'cause this is the other one from earlier this year that has made many people say, hang on, you can cheat at a lot of different sports and you can cheat in interesting ways.
Hans Neiman, is a chess player at the moment. 20 21, 20 22. He was a rapidly rising star. Mm-hmm. In 2022, he won the World Open Chess tournament in Philadelphia.
[00:12:52] ROD: Did he?
[00:12:52] WILL: But
[00:12:53] ROD: did he? It,
[00:12:54] WILL: it, it appears he did. Appears he did well. He certainly won it. And it appears he, he won as legitimately as he could.
[00:13:00] But in September, 2022, uh, Neiman BB became embroiled in a controversy after he defeated the world chess champion Magnus Carlson. Now Magnus Carlson, no
[00:13:10] ROD: one fucks with the
[00:13:11] WILL: No one, No. I mean, he, obviously doesn't win every single game he's in, but he wins a lot of games against a lot of very good players,
I would
imagine. Um, anyway, he defeated the reigning champion of the third round of the 2022 Qua Field Cup
[00:13:24] ROD: As
a result. Mm-hmm.
[00:13:25] WILL: Uh, Carlson withdrew from the tournament, which many later interpreted as an accusation that Neiman had cheated during the
[00:13:32] ROD: match.
Could have been
suing
[00:13:33] WILL: late. He, he could have been, he could have been later.
Carlson, uh, directly accused Neiman of cheating and said he would decline future pairings with him. Now, here's the thing. The story went around. That the method of cheating was that, uh, thumb
[00:13:50] ROD: thumb up the bum.
[00:13:51] WILL: It was in some version, It was the electronic anal beads.
What.
[00:13:56] ROD: What?
[00:13:57] WILL: so a what a
vibe.
No, you,
[00:13:59] ROD: you [00:14:00] really, this is too good. My brain's
frozen. No,
[00:14:03] WILL: it's too good. But the problem is this, is, this is, this is more story than we have justice here. The story is that,
[00:14:10] ROD: who's wearing them?
[00:14:11] WILL: Neiman, uh, Hans Neiman, wearing some vibrating anal beads that were Bluetooth activated.
[00:14:18] ROD: How is this cheating?
[00:14:20] WILL: No, it's cheating when he's receiving messages from them that apparently he was receiving instruction from either a team or a, or, or,
[00:14:30] ROD: so I want, I want, I want you to get me messages how anal beads you can imagine. The cheetah helpers are like, really hunt your solution to everything is you wear anal beads,
[00:14:41] WILL: so, uh, we, we don't have any, any further evidence.
So Neiman has admitted that he cheated as a kid, like when he was 12 and 14 or something like that, um, that he'd cheated in some online tournaments, uh, but hasn't cheated since then. and he's declared that he would play naked. Uh.
[00:14:59] ROD: [00:15:00] But that doesn't solve the problem of whether you can see anal beads.
[00:15:03] WILL: Indeed, indeed.
This is, this is what I thought when I read that description. It's like,
[00:15:07] ROD: like naked, bent over and clutching your ankles. Even then
[00:15:10] WILL: Anyway. a year later, 20 23, 20 24, uh, Magnus Carlson and Hans Neal, they, they, they came to an agreement and, and, Neiman has stuck to his guns and said, no, I was never cheating. Perhaps this was all just a rumor that went around that, maybe Carlson was a bit, uh, a bit pouty. But I do like the idea, I do like the idea a of, of cheating in chess.
Not to ruin the beautiful game, but, but no
[00:15:36] ROD: the idea that he was definitely cheating.
How ain. Look. Beads.
did you see that? And go, I've, I'm gonna make him the happiest man in the
world. Well,
[00:15:45] WILL: No. Well, no, because, because I've got another one in here that, that is, is miserable, but are gonna make you
[00:15:51] ROD: happy. Let's see if I picked it. Frederick
Lorz?
[00:15:54] WILL: I love Frederick Lords.
I love Frederick Lords. He's not the one that's gonna make you happy. I I will do a few more. So, Frederick Laws [00:16:00] is, um, an innovator in the olden days spirits because he was. A marathon runner in the 1904 Olympic Games.
[00:16:09] ROD: So basically wearing a pair, like you'd strap a pair of sheep to your feet and run.
[00:16:13] WILL: Not far off. Not far off. I don't think they
[00:16:14] ROD: Nail leather to
[00:16:15] WILL: I think their training back in the day was drinking brandy and, and smoking cigarettes. just to, just to confess, it does appear that Frederick Laws was a pretty decent runner, right? Um, he, he won some other events both before and after this one. but he's a bricklayer from New York. Yeah. And a pretty distant marathon runner, but the 1904 Olympic Games held in St.
Louis, Missouri. I think. Anyway, conditions were brutal.
And so Fred Laws, He got to about 14 Ks and he's like,
[00:16:44] ROD: Taxi.
[00:16:45] WILL: well,
[00:16:45] ROD: yes.
Oh, Jesus. Really?
[00:16:48] WILL: his manager gave him a lift in his car and, and I've just gotta confess, this is, this is full on old jalopy mobile. Like it's, it's
like
[00:16:56] ROD: you go, you go
[00:16:57] WILL: 1904 Chitty chitty bang bang.
So [00:17:00] probably going a little bit faster than the other runners.
Uh, but not a lot.
Drove him the next 18 kilometers before the car broke down, after which laws was, was forced to continue on foot. Oh,
uh, back to the Olympic Stadium where he broke the finishing line tape and was greeted as the
winner.
[00:17:14] ROD: Well, he would,
[00:17:15] WILL: some spectators claimed he hadn't run the entire race.
Um, laws was confronted by furious officials with these allegations. On which he admitted his deception, but said it was a practical joke, which I'm not sure
[00:17:26] ROD: if
you Gotcha.
[00:17:27] WILL: I'm not sure if you can do practical
jokes afterwards
in, in an Olympics
[00:17:31] ROD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No psych,
[00:17:33] WILL: Like,
[00:17:34] ROD: so you took an hour off the marathon record. I know.
[00:17:38] WILL: they responded by banning him for life, but this was commuted to six months with good behavior. Uh, he formally apologized, uh, that he'd not intended to defraud. I just wanna say the, the actual winner who, the person who was then awarded the, the race. Right. was Thomas Hicks, although he too had an unusual race because he walked part of the route, which is not, not great marathoning.
But anyway, he, he was
also
[00:17:59] ROD: and [00:18:00] cigar are, you
[00:18:00] WILL: Well, yeah, he was also carried by his trainers. A chunk of the, and
[00:18:05] ROD: and still
on
[00:18:05] WILL: being dosed with Strine and, uh, and brandy,
[00:18:08] ROD: we go. That if, if you want the real insanity look at the history of cycling in the olden days and there is nothing, they did
[00:18:15] WILL: not
take, no. I don't know what Strine does to you to make you faster, but it
[00:18:19] ROD: No, no, just it's pain numbing.
Exactly what, it's pretty much all the drugs I heard, arsenic and all these other horrific drugs that you hear about from, you know, 19th century mystery novels. It's all just to make you not feel pain until the point where you feel colossal pain and die. Ah,
[00:18:31] WILL: Ah, great,
[00:18:32] ROD: But before then,
[00:18:34] WILL: yeah, add the brandy for, gimme another
[00:18:36] ROD: We'll do one more.
[00:18:37] WILL: Yeah.
[00:18:38] ROD: East German bobsled team 1968.
[00:18:41] WILL: I don't have much on these guys. I don't have much on these guys because they just turned up in a, in a, and another thing in a story, but, uh, but this, this, this is the bobsled team and obviously we know the bobsled, you, you, um, jump in the, the sort of little train caboose thing.
Yep. Um, and you slide
[00:18:56] ROD: the
ice and you scream cool runnings as you
[00:18:58] WILL: go
and you scream Cool. Runnings as you [00:19:00] go. Yeah. Um, what they did, it's pretty simple. They just took, took a blowtorch to their, um, to the sleds. Heat them up as much as you can. Of course. So they're cutting through the ice. Like, I don't even see a crime.
I don't see, there's no
[00:19:12] ROD: crime
That's a smart,
[00:19:13] WILL: I'll give you some more
in a
[00:19:14] ROD: bit.
All righty.
Don John AKA, the Prime Minister of America. I think that's what they call
[00:19:21] WILL: him. Again, I think
you, you, you probably need to give some facts here.
[00:19:24] ROD: Oh, Donald Trump. Yes. The Prime Minister of America.
[00:19:27] WILL: Yes.
[00:19:28] ROD: thank you. He, um, you've probably heard about this, he wants to build or wanted to build a golden dome, a protective
[00:19:34] WILL: missile
Oh, not a physical dome, but a, but a protective
[00:19:37] ROD: a Protective
[00:19:38] WILL: dome.
Like a, like a, a condom, like the golden
[00:19:40] ROD: condom covering
Yeah. A missile proof Golden condom.
[00:19:43] WILL: Yeah.
[00:19:43] ROD: of
course it's golden 'cause it's him.
[00:19:45] WILL: He loves gold. He, he really does love
[00:19:47] ROD: He really does. So of course this is Golden Dome. So this, this is an article from, uh, end of September. It's September 25th, so recent. So on his second day in the job, which is, uh, late July, space Force Chief [00:20:00] General, uh, Michael Grin,
[00:20:02] WILL: Flynn
[00:20:03] ROD: GLIN is American.
They probably call him line.
[00:20:06] WILL: General Michael. Fine.
[00:20:08] ROD: He was given 60 days to come up with an objective architecture for President Trump's Golden Dome Missile Defense
[00:20:15] WILL: year.
[00:20:15] ROD: Okay.
60 days. So they gave him some time.
[00:20:17] WILL: That's fine. Yeah.
[00:20:18] ROD: Um, it seems that Trump is convinced that things like space-based interceptors already exist
[00:20:25] WILL: to
[00:20:25] ROD: protect America from Yep.
All its adversaries. Uh, they, they don't, they don't exist. They don't have space, space interceptors that can take missiles
[00:20:33] WILL: outta
the air.
He'd heard of them though.
He's
[00:20:35] ROD: So Trump announced in May of this year, it's 2025. For you listening in the future, the system would be a constellation of hundreds of space based and ballistic missile interceptors.
Yes. It'll be completed in three years. Yeah, of course. And it would cost 175 billion.
Sure.
Experts consider this to be a tad on the, I think phrase is optimistic
[00:20:56] WILL: side, which
bet.
[00:20:58] ROD: Well, all
[00:20:58] WILL: of
it.
[00:20:59] ROD: [00:21:00] Just, just, just all the details,
[00:21:01] WILL: The happening or whether it would work or whether it would be useful
[00:21:04] ROD: or
or how much it would cost, how long it would take.
Yeah. You name it. Keep listing. Yeah. Okay. Because yes,
[00:21:09] WILL: I love projects that are both, ludicrous from both directions. Yeah, yeah. You know?
[00:21:13] ROD: yeah,
yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, um, after 60 Days, which is very recent, the Space General, sorry, space General Chief, space Chief Guy,
[00:21:21] WILL: I
[00:21:21] ROD: says
[00:21:22] WILL: the
[00:21:23] ROD: was complete, but of course he couldn't give any details about scope, timeline, or cost because, you know, national security and shit,
[00:21:30] WILL: But give them to, he could give them to Trump or not.
[00:21:33] ROD: That I don't
[00:21:33] WILL: know,
Okay. Alright.
[00:21:34] ROD: but he certainly couldn't tell Reuters and all other such reporting types. So other estimates from other American experts, the American Enterprise Institute did a study on the feasibility of this golden dme. They reckon it would cost somewhere between 252 and three point billion and 3.6 trillion and would take 20 years,
which
is almost exactly the same as three years and, and 175.
Yeah. [00:22:00] Very. You know,
[00:22:00] WILL: I, I love,
I love small margins. I love when you slide into the trillions.
[00:22:04] ROD: Yeah. Yeah. And not just one or two, nearly four. You go from, uh, what, like a, a, a fifth of a trillion to a shit ton. More than
[00:22:13] WILL: that.
it would cost, earn a couple of Australias that,
[00:22:17] ROD: exactly. Yeah, yeah. yeah. Over 20 years. So no big deal.
And then the Congressional Budget Office, which is on paper nonpartisan, they estimate the cost would be between half a trillion to 0.8, nearly a 4 trillion.
[00:22:30] WILL: Oh, that's a narrower band.
[00:22:31] ROD: It's way narrower and it's a lot
[00:22:33] WILL: less
than Let's go with them six.
[00:22:35] ROD: Exactly. He'll be like, take that. Um, but arguing over cost is kind of amusing in general because the ability to actually intercept ballistic missiles basically is almost impossible at the moment.
[00:22:46] WILL: Ah, can't, can't we use AI
[00:22:48] ROD: though?
Yes.
[00:22:50] WILL: Think
like chat GPT, where is the missile there? And and
it
[00:22:55] ROD: points with
its virtual claw confidently.
[00:22:57] WILL: Confidently makes up underwater[00:23:00]
[00:23:00] ROD: next to
you.
Don't look now, So in over four decades of research, nuclear technicians have successfully knocked one single dummy warhead out of the sky, apparently. And that four, and that was
done
[00:23:13] WILL: many times did they try
[00:23:14] ROD: more than one.
[00:23:15] WILL: than one. Like it could be one out of two or one
out
[00:23:19] ROD: one outta one.
And we've got a hundred percent success rate. And then
[00:23:21] WILL: don't do it again, guys, don't
do it
again. We, we
[00:23:23] ROD: cost $4 trillion and took us a decade. Um, also this was done under, I love this quote, uh, extremely generous test conditions. And apparently this, this all began with Reagan's Star Wars initiative in
the
[00:23:35] WILL: Yeah, yeah. I remember. I remember.
[00:23:37] ROD: Yeah, it's wonderful. And they spent 400 billion or so
[00:23:39] WILL: on that. Did they really? I thought it was more thought bubble and they just thought about
[00:23:43] ROD: spending
money was spent.
[00:23:44] WILL: and then they went, oh no.
It's with wildly
[00:23:46] ROD: impossible.
Well, it depends where you count. I mean, do you count people like spitballing
[00:23:50] WILL: mean, I mean the big challenge here is that of
all of
it, the America is a big country.
if, if your comparison, I mean, I mean two comparisons
here
Israel, if you're looking at the Iron [00:24:00] Dome a, you're not facing necessarily ballistic missiles. No, but, but much smaller land mass. It's, and it's interesting that in the Star Wars era, uh, Reagan reckons we can defend the whole continent, but, uh, Russia at the time were like, no, we'll just do Moscow,
[00:24:13] ROD: So, um, yeah, Reagan
spent 400 billion and nothing happened. Also amusingly that was still being spent and Trump froze that funding earlier
[00:24:20] WILL: in
his, was
that still being
[00:24:21] ROD: spent
apparently? 'cause TR Trump froze it. Um, anyway, so it's not really clear where they're up to on the Golden Dome. Um, I suspect it's not super advanced.
But then there was another, I saw another article, which is five days after this one. So end of September, it was in the South China morning post. Uh huh.
[00:24:40] WILL: uhhuh. Are they, are they faithful reporters of American
or Oring geostrategic
[00:24:45] ROD: thinking,
all things? Well, they're reporting on China, China's abilities, and even more faithful with
that,
[00:24:51] WILL: they say,
[00:24:51] ROD: uh, China has deployed a working prototype of a global defense system similar to the United States proposed Golden
[00:24:57] WILL: Dome.
Mm-hmm.
[00:24:58] ROD: Uh,
[00:24:59] WILL: Uh,
[00:24:59] ROD: while hailing [00:25:00] a breakthrough in data processing technology for worldwide threat management. Okay.
[00:25:04] WILL: Okay.
It
[00:25:05] ROD: goes on by leveraging diverse sensors in space, the ocean, the air, and on the ground. So all the elements,
[00:25:12] WILL: Or
[00:25:12] ROD: nothing about fire. The system identifies an and analyzes potential threats, acquires critical information real time, like flight trajectories, weapon types, and whether they're true warheads or decoys designed
to
[00:25:24] WILL: intercept.
How can they tell
[00:25:25] ROD: that?
well, they use the
[00:25:27] WILL: systems.
Ah, yeah. Yeah. I mean 'cause because the point of a decoy
Yeah.
[00:25:30] ROD: Is to full fool the system. Not these guys, not this
[00:25:35] WILL: one.
I, I just feel that Yes, yes. Trump, yes. Yeah. But also maybe some American, uh, strategic thinkers may bluster, it may be possible that the Chinese military might have a bit of bluster as
[00:25:48] ROD: well.
Funny you should say
[00:25:49] WILL: that
[00:25:51] ROD: because I also say the distributed early warning detection big data platform is still in its early stages of development and all of it's, it's detection, not
[00:25:59] WILL: [00:26:00] destruction. Mm-hmm.
[00:26:01] ROD: But
look, it can totally simultaneously monitor like a thousand missiles fired from China, anywhere in the world that once, et cetera.
So that's fine. So, but I'm not holding my breath. 'cause look, as a teen, I was super excited by Reagan and Star Wars. I thought this, this is the coolest shit in the world. They're gonna have lasers that blow bad people's missiles outta the sky. Fuck yeah, sure, sure. But I was hurt 'cause that did not happen.
So I don't believe any of these. I don't believe them at all. And I've just, yeah, I've been hurt before. I'm not gonna be hurt again by you liars.
[00:26:29] WILL: Alright, gimme some more, uh, gimme some more names and I'll tell you
[00:26:32] ROD: some
more
stories. Tell me what these names are for. I've
[00:26:34] WILL: forgotten.
Uh, innovation in sports.
[00:26:36] ROD: Cheating. Innovation in
[00:26:37] WILL: People. People who have used, uh, interesting methods to cheat.
[00:26:41] ROD: Yeah. 'cause if you just dived in, and I know a lot of you listened halfway through most recordings, Will's given
me a, he gave me a grab bag of names to see how awesome it is. And he's promised me something delicious, but I've gotta pick it. An Antonio Margarita. Oh,
[00:26:54] WILL: Oh, okay. All right. So, uh, boxing has a long. And [00:27:00] storied history of people
[00:27:01] ROD: cheating.
decent. Oh,
[00:27:02] WILL: Oh, oh yeah. Obviously there is, there is the performance enhancing drugs quite a lot. Uh, there are obviously famous stories of people, painting the outside of their gloves with different sorts of things. Tiger bomb. Uh oh. That makes you face sting a little bit
more.
Lead,
[00:27:18] ROD: A lead.
[00:27:20] WILL: uh, well, well,
[00:27:20] ROD: the
horseshoe in the, in the glove.
[00:27:23] WILL: Antonio Margarito is, is of that type.
Right. Um, his version. So in 20 2009, yeah. Uh, he was fighting Shane Mosley. Uh, and, and Antonio Margarito, chloroform
officials noticed a suspicious substance was found on the moist pads inside his
[00:27:41] ROD: gloves.
[00:27:42] WILL: it
was Plaster of Paris. And so what's happening here is as it gets wet, so he is got the plaster.
As it gets wet, it hardens. Yeah. And, and makes your gloves more punchy. And
[00:27:53] ROD: like, that's cunning.
[00:27:54] WILL: Look at you. Look at you. That's cunning. Little bit unfair, but uh, there
[00:27:59] ROD: well, like what is it? [00:28:00] Cornflower if you, when it's
[00:28:00] WILL: wet Oh, a Newtonian
[00:28:02] ROD: Under the impact it goes.
[00:28:03] WILL: Doof.
Thank you, Questacon. Thank you. There you go.
So it would be liquid otherwise, but then
[00:28:08] ROD: when you punch someone in the ding dong
hard
as a
[00:28:11] WILL: rock.
There you go. There you go.
[00:28:15] WILL: So
[00:28:15] ROD: it turns
out
this is artificial intelligence, but it's, it seems a bit sad. It's a bit desperate. It's a bit desperate. So AI apps really don't like it when you leave the chat, or at least the companion apps apparently don't like
it.
Um, so there's a Harvard Business School study hasn't yet been peer reviewed, but I don't care. You know, it's coming obviously. Obviously we don't care about peer review around here because we've met peers and they're not all excellent.
[00:28:38] WILL: Well, well,
I, ours are, I mean, well by definition, if they're not our peers, if they're not excellent.
[00:28:44] ROD: Oh, good point. so they investigated apps that, uh, explicitly market emotionally immersive, ongoing conversational relationships like not chat GPT and stuff, but companion apps
[00:28:53] WILL: that
are
actually
are you trying to make me
[00:28:54] ROD: trying to be angry?
We'll
get there. Mm-hmm.
Why would you get
[00:28:57] WILL: angry?
I why would
[00:28:58] ROD: Why would you get angry? You love [00:29:00] AI and you believe everything about
[00:29:01] WILL: it.
[00:29:02] ROD: Anyway, so two studies. Uh, they looked at real world chat conversations, data sets, and also some data sets from previous studies. But real world chats. First study, 1200, real farewells goodbyes across six of these
[00:29:15] WILL: apps.
Like Bon Voyage.
[00:29:16] ROD: Yes.
Charles. Charles. Yeah. Like, like, okay, time for me
[00:29:20] WILL: to
oh, like logging off?
[00:29:21] ROD: Is
this mom said I've gotta come and have dinner now
I'm gonna
go. That kind
of, that
[00:29:25] WILL: of log off. Not a, not a, i I will, I will not see you anymore. We must
[00:29:29] ROD: up. I'm falling upon my sword now.
[00:29:31] WILL: I mean, do people break up with their
[00:29:33] ROD: chat
Fuck yeah, they do. For sure.
[00:29:35] WILL: do.
[00:29:35] ROD: like,
if they wanna marry them, they would also break up with them.
[00:29:37] WILL: Yeah, but do they tell them, because I mean, you, you own
No,
[00:29:40] ROD: Well, that's a decent
thing to
[00:29:41] WILL: do.
You own no formal
[00:29:43] ROD: commitment.
Don't you apologize to auto correct?
[00:29:45] WILL: I say please and thank you to to the talky
ones. Do you?
Yeah. I've said this before, but I don't, I wouldn't apologize.
[00:29:52] ROD: God, you've got a line in the sand. I mean, you're,
[00:29:55] WILL: Look at me.
[00:29:55] ROD: you're a man with standards. [00:30:00] So, um, they looked at, there are six apps, so things like replica chai, character, ai, and all the ones, you
[00:30:06] WILL: know,
I know. No,
[00:30:07] ROD: you know, you know the ones you know neither, neither did,
right.
So they found there was emotionally manipulative, farewells were part of the app's default behavior.
[00:30:15] WILL: oh, you serious?
[00:30:17] ROD: Yeah. You angry yet you angry yet
[00:30:21] WILL: Emotionally manipulative farewells. Oh Jesus
[00:30:24] ROD: Five out of six of the popular ai companion apps use emotionally loaded statements to keep users engaged.
Right. While they're trying to sign off. Nearly half of the interactions use manipulative tactics such as eliciting guilt or displaying emotional neediness. And so one of the arguments in this piece was, well, maybe the creators are trying to prolong conversations. You're like, you, you think. But they also use things like fear of missing out to prompt the user to stay.
I didn't get examples,
[00:30:50] WILL: I'm about to get naked or
[00:30:51] ROD: Yeah, I'm, I've got this sick new song I wrote, don't Wanna Stay and here it, you don't, don't listen to your mom. You don't have to go to dine yet.
[00:30:56] WILL: Wait.
[00:30:57] ROD: Um, they pestered people with questions, so it'd be like, well, I've gotta go. [00:31:00] And they're like, yeah, but you know, what are you wearing?
What kind of onions do you like?
[00:31:04] WILL: What kind of
[00:31:05] ROD: Ions, pe PEs, I'm making this up. But, you know, pestered them with questions to keep them in. You are like, I've gotta go now. Hang on a minute. Are those new shoes?
Um, some
chatbots would ignore the user saying they're gonna leave entirely. Like they're literally as if the user didn't even say, I've gotta go now.
They just keep talking. Like, I didn't hear
[00:31:20] WILL: god.
[00:31:21] ROD: My favorite was using language that basically suggested they people couldn't leave without the chatbot's permission.
[00:31:27] WILL: Yeah. Great. Great.
Isn't that awesome? Great, Great.
So we've gone from manipulative relationships that obviously exist in the world and are not
[00:31:34] ROD: great.
[00:31:36] WILL: And then we've gone, you know what? We can, we can, we can get a machine
[00:31:39] ROD: to
do Supercharge
[00:31:40] WILL: this.
Why? Why? have that experience only for the people in relationships
[00:31:45] ROD: yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Oh, your relationship seems kind of normal. How about you try one of these just so you get the full
[00:31:50] WILL: gamut?
[00:31:52] ROD: It's,
[00:31:52] WILL: it's, it's, oh
[00:31:53] ROD: wow. That's
just one of the, the studies. There's only one app that didn't, it's called Flourish and apparently it showed no evidence of this [00:32:00] manipulation.
[00:32:01] WILL: Oh, great.
[00:32:02] ROD: Which is suggesting that, and, and this is a reasonable thing to think about. People before this were thinking, well, maybe it's just somehow these ais tend to Yeah.
Operate. Ah,
[00:32:13] WILL: so you're saying instead it's
a
deliberate
[00:32:15] ROD: It's, this is the suggestion that it's deliberate. Oh,
[00:32:17] WILL: Oh my God.
[00:32:18] ROD: this is the suggestion. This is not proven. It's just a suggestion from this. The second study, so they got chats from nearly three and half thousand adult participants. On average participants stayed in the chat five times longer compared to natural farewells.
When these kinds of things were.
We're going on.
But sometimes the, you know, we fought
back,
sometimes people found these chatbots a little clingy, so it backfired the like, you know, mate, please, please leave me alone. So, um, I dunno, does that, does that worry
you,
[00:32:47] WILL: do
[00:32:47] ROD: think there are ethics involved? Do you think it matters?
What do you think? You, you appear to have no
[00:32:51] WILL: emotions.
No, no. I, I spent my emotions on this. This is, this is so fucked. I, I, this makes me so angry. I just, I, there is [00:33:00] no way a sane society would allow a corporation to fake love and manipulate people like this so explicitly, like at least smoking.
You get something out
[00:33:10] ROD: of
it.
Yeah. It's awesome.
[00:33:12] WILL: Yes. Like you get to look cool. Yeah. And you get the chemical hit. But
this, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. To those of you fall in love with your, uh, your AI boyfriend or girlfriend, you do not look cool. Like, you don't get that. You get, you get the chemical manipulation and you get to spend money on it.
Hooray.
[00:33:32] ROD: Fraud.
All upside. All upside. And I, the, the paper apparently concludes with, you know, there are certain, you know, ethical and, and risk concerns. You're like, well done, well concluded.
[00:33:45] WILL: All right. Gimme some more of these. 'cause I've, I, I, there's some doozies
[00:33:48] ROD: in here some more
[00:33:49] WILL: that I have, these are stories of innovation in sports
[00:33:53] ROD: Oh, that's right. Story there. This, the, into the lucky dip again.
I don't know. I'm so excited.
All right.
[00:34:00] Boris
Onishchenko.
[00:34:01] WILL: Ah, you're a fencer,
aren't
you?
Yes. You, you have fenced, you have the sword fighting that they don't call
[00:34:07] ROD: haves. I have, I have two foils in my study
[00:34:09] WILL: at
home.
What's the difference between a foil and an epi?
Well,
[00:34:12] ROD: the spelling and the tip, also the
[00:34:17] WILL: weight
weight
[00:34:18] ROD: and balance in girth in your n garde
[00:34:21] WILL: position.
Boris Chenko was a Soviet Olympian. Uh, he did his best work in the 1972 games as part of the team Pentathol, the modern
pentathlon. You remember
that? Which we, I've just gotta pause to say modern pentathlon Cool as fuck sport.
So,
[00:34:35] ROD: oh. It's the, it's the Renaissance,
[00:34:37] WILL: uh,
it really is. I'm a renaissance
[00:34:39] ROD: gentleman. What do, you do.
It's, what is, it's, it's like horse riding, shooting, fencing, painting,
[00:34:43] WILL: sculpture.
not not
[00:34:44] ROD: quite
loving, loving a lady or a
[00:34:46] WILL: man.
Uh, not quite sadly, close. this one. Uh, this one is fencing, uh, swimming obstacle course running, uh, laser Pistols.
[00:34:55] ROD: Laser Pistols, 1972. Laser
Pistols.
Yeah. Well,
you
know, it
was like [00:35:00] Moonraker, it was like
[00:35:00] WILL: I dunno if they, I dunno if they were using Laser Pistols in 1972.
The modern rules have laser
[00:35:05] ROD: pistols,
so
they go
[00:35:06] WILL: pew.
But anyway, they, they're, they're doing swords. They're doing shooting
and they're doing swimming. they're doing,
you know, they're doing
[00:35:10] ROD: they're doing
[00:35:10] WILL: like, it's, it's
[00:35:11] ROD: cool.
They're renaissance and
[00:35:13] WILL: Yeah. Which, which is weird for the Soviets because I don't know if the Soviets generally as a people said, you know what we should all be awesome at is Rene
[00:35:20] ROD: we should be like the bourgeois.
That's what we want
[00:35:22] WILL: do.
But he is probably best remembered for the 1976
Olympics in Montreal. Um, he'd been world champion a bunch of times before this Olympics, um, but he'd never sealed the deal and got the gold in the Olympics.
[00:35:34] ROD: Oh.
[00:35:34] WILL: and he was doing pretty well in the competition. now the fencing in the, uh, pentathlon was called One Touch Epi.
So
basically, they did a round robin, all the people in the competition that have a fencing match against each other, and whoever got the touch won the match. So if
you,
[00:35:51] ROD: the first
[00:35:51] WILL: tipity, if you got the tip on the other persons, you don't have to chop their head off or anything. You got the
[00:35:55] ROD: tip on
the well, you know, to be fair, most fencing, you don't have to chop the head off either. It's not just in the [00:36:00] pentathlon,
[00:36:00] WILL: oh, that's ruin
[00:36:00] ROD: ruin for
me.
I know it's horrible,
but
uh,
[00:36:03] WILL: but, the touch would be registered on the scoring box when the tip of the weapon is depressed with a force of 750 grams. Don't worry about that. But it, it just, there there's a, there's an electronic circuit that once the point of the sword hits
[00:36:15] ROD: the other
person,
ah, it can't just be like a lazy little brush by accident. It has to be a direct
[00:36:19] WILL: poke.
[00:36:19] ROD: Yeah.
[00:36:20] WILL: Okay.
So the Russians were facing, the Britains, early in the first in, in the day, first, on Chenko, uh, beat Danny Nightingale. I was expecting to lose.
[00:36:30] ROD: come on, Pete. More England, Danny Nightingale.
[00:36:35] WILL: Look, Uh, well, Danny Nightingale expected to lose because I was expect, uh, I was, he was a renowned fencer.
Um, oh, next up was Adrian Parker. Weirdly Chenko scored a hit, but we couldn't quite see how he managed it. So he got
[00:36:50] ROD: the
point.
It went beep,
[00:36:52] WILL: Huh?
It went beep, but huh. Like, it looks close. And
[00:36:54] ROD: people
and
the
British,
[00:36:55] WILL: British were like, ah, that's kind of
[00:36:57] ROD: weird.
[00:36:58] WILL: They thought there might've been something going, a [00:37:00] technical malfunction, but they kept
going. Mm-hmm. Finally,
they played, chenko, uh, Fort jeweled belted, balloted belted with the British captain.
36-year-old Jim Fox. Now Jim Fox. Wiley like a fox. You can't get nothing
past
Jim.
No.
So, uh,
[00:37:16] ROD: no one out foxes the
fox. No
way. That's what his T-shirt
[00:37:18] WILL: where his T-shirt says.
and weirdly Chenko lunged towards his rival, Jim Fox. And Jim Fox leapt backwards and he is like, no way. No fucking way. The point hit me.
Yeah.
But the scoreboard
[00:37:29] ROD: lit
up.
[00:37:30] WILL: Wave A,
it's like waving a magic wand, said Jim Fox. Wiley like a fox. He's like, no, you tried it on the wrong bloke, man. I'll be, I've been around too long for fall for that. And so he said, I want to check out his, his. Foil, his epi,
[00:37:43] ROD: Show me your
[00:37:44] WILL: gear.
The official said, all right, something might be going on here.
they had a look at the epi and, uh, buried in the handle of the Russians
sword. A wizard's tongue
wizard, wizards,
[00:37:55] ROD: tongue No.
[00:37:56] WILL: elaborate electronic behind a layer of leather, a complex wiring [00:38:00] system, which when a pressure pad in the sword was
[00:38:02] ROD: depressed. So,
James Bond,
[00:38:04] WILL: yeah, he's, he's got a, a little pressure pad in the sword when when it comes close he can, he can trigger the pressure pad and get
[00:38:11] ROD: the
hit.
So
he got to the point, he got, he got a bit drunk, and as they're saluting, he pushes it,
[00:38:14] WILL: by
the
way,
we gotcha. Binging. Bing, bing.
Hang
a
minute.
It was a real engineering job. Someone said not just a ham's effort. so yeah, he'd, he'd rigged up some false electronics to claim the points. they got kicked out of the Olympics, and Chenko was dragged before.
Um, the Soviet lead leader, Leonard Brezhnev, for a personal scolding, and he ended up driving a taxi
[00:38:37] ROD: in
Kia. You should never have been
[00:38:38] WILL: caught.
[00:38:40] ROD: No doubt
you dumb busted.
[00:38:42] WILL: Um, and so the Western Press, of course, called him dishonest Chenko.
[00:38:45] ROD: Of course it just
rolls
[00:38:46] WILL: the tongue.
Gimme
another
One
I, I'm gonna keep going.
I gonna keep going until you get the one that is designed for
[00:38:51] ROD: you.
[00:38:52] WILL: Spyridon Belokas. He's, he's like Fred Lauras, but he was, he was eight years before and cars hadn't been invented yet. So he's a [00:39:00] marathon runner.
And cars. This is, this is in
Athens. So who, well, he caught a carriage
[00:39:06] ROD: Horses,
[00:39:07] WILL: halfway through the marathon. He's, he's taken a carriage and,
[00:39:10] ROD: I say handsome
[00:39:11] WILL: cat.
[00:39:13] ROD: Good sir.
[00:39:14] WILL: In
Greek.
I like him. Gimme another one.
[00:39:16] ROD: The
Spanish netball team. Come on. That sounds
[00:39:18] WILL: Netball team. The Spanish
[00:39:20] ROD: That should be the name of a, of a cartoon.
[00:39:22] WILL: This is the Paralympic Games in Sydney.
2000.
Is
it?
Spain had
their most, uh, successful
[00:39:31] ROD: ever.
They cheated at the
[00:39:32] WILL: Paralympics. They
cheated at
[00:39:34] ROD: Paralympics. Come on, that's
[00:39:35] WILL: dirty.
Come on, come
[00:39:37] ROD: on. If
you're gonna cheat, at least cheat fully able-bodied people, they,
[00:39:41] WILL: They, they won 107 medals and came third on the medal table and won. They particularly celebrated for a while was gold in basketball in the intellectual disability category. Jesus Christ.
[00:39:56] ROD: But at
[00:39:56] WILL: least one member of the team was not who everyone thought
[00:39:59] ROD: he
was.[00:40:00]
No.
[00:40:01] WILL: Carlos River Goda. Part of the Victor's team played on the team, was in fact an undercover journalist. What?
[00:40:08] ROD: What
[00:40:09] WILL: Yeah, I
[00:40:10] ROD: this will fool him.
[00:40:12] WILL: Well, he was an undercover journalist because he had suspicions that most of his teammates in the basketball team, as well as potentially people throughout the Spanish table, tennis track and field and swimming teams had undergone none of the testing required to demonstrate that they had an IQ under
75.
[00:40:32] ROD: undercover.
This
is blackface like, seriously.
[00:40:37] WILL: Wait, wait, wait, wait. It turns out that 10 of the 12 competitors, including Carlos, but he was there because he was uncovering it. Were not intellectually disabled at all. Fuck.
[00:40:52] ROD: I just need to see footage because obviously that's gotta be one of the worst things you've ever seen people pretending. [00:41:00] How do you train
[00:41:00] WILL: This is the worst. This is the worst. This is the worst Look, this has been a deliberate policy by the Spanish
[00:41:08] ROD: Federation Why? Like, why?
[00:41:11] WILL: so they obviously had faked it. They had done none of the tests and, uh, this was in an effort to win a whole
[00:41:19] ROD: part of why, like,
[00:41:19] WILL: Why? Like,
[00:41:20] ROD: what the fuck are you
[00:41:21] WILL: doing?
What, what is, so, and you know what, you know, what makes this worse? You know, what makes this worse?
After this controversy. the, I don't know which the sporting governing body, but so, so the, uh, international Olympic Committee, the International Paralympic Committee, if they said, all right, we need, better ways of testing mental, uh, intellectual disability
[00:41:40] ROD: or any by
[00:41:41] WILL: by this. Well, indeed, indeed. And they said IQ under 75 it's like winning a slow horse race. It's, it's, you can fake it and there's, there's no way to actually demonstrate this. So for a decade, their solution, their solution was to say, oh, no, we don't run any intellectually disa disabled people in the Paralympics.
We [00:42:00] just, we just, all of these people for a decade, people who, uh, are interested in whatever their sport is, they wanna play their sport and are challenged by life, obviously.
And
were kicked, kicked out of sport because of these, fuck, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just still blown away.
[00:42:16] ROD: So these guys cheated. And it turned into a situation where you can't test people to see if they're eligible.
Mm-hmm.
So you get caught in this what's appropriate
[00:42:24] WILL: loop.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
[00:42:25] ROD: Mm-hmm. Because, I'm sorry, this is, as I say, it's a south park brain. To me, the idea that you say to a bunch of people, okay, we want you to pretend to have an IQ of less than 75
[00:42:32] WILL: this, this, this, Look, it's objectively what? So wildly wrong.
It's hilarious. Like it's
[00:42:38] ROD: just,
it's
just, yeah,
'cause it's insane. Like, you couldn't make that
[00:42:40] WILL: shit
up.
What moment does a sporting governing body say, okay, what you have to do is
[00:42:44] ROD: pretend
you know what,
[00:42:46] WILL: oh, oh,
[00:42:49] ROD: how like Spain, we are the conquerors of the disabled Olympics. 'cause we
[00:42:53] WILL: cheated.
you know, I don't doubt that there's cheating in, in categories where people, but, but, but to be organized in your [00:43:00] cheating. at the management level to go, you know what? We want to get more of these medal.
[00:43:04] ROD: Like, what
are you talking about?
I'm just, what are you talking about?
[00:43:07] WILL: I'm just broken. I here, I, I gotta give you a fun story. What else have you got?
Uh,
we'll finish up on Rosie Ruiz. Like,
[00:43:13] ROD: uh,
Rosie Ruiz. Ruiz?
[00:43:16] WILL: Yeah. All right. so I've told you a bunch of marathon cheaters and, uh, like, that's, that's the easy one to cheat. Uh, Rosie's got two stories of cheating. Uh, one in the, the New York marathon. One in the Boston Marathon, look, her technological innovation is just that.
Um,
she registered for the race. Mm-hmm. didn't do any running. Caught the
subway.
And stepped out at the end. Just stepped out at
[00:43:42] ROD: the
end.
gimme a medal.
[00:43:44] WILL: So,
[00:43:45] ROD: and Rosie's
[00:43:46] WILL: and Rosie's problem. Rosie's problem is she didn't intend to step out, like to win the race.
She just wanted to be a finisher.
But she didn't,
she didn't wait to
check. She
didn't wait to
check if any other
women had gone.
[00:43:58] ROD: damnit? [00:44:00] That's
[00:44:00] WILL: hilarious.
Uh, listener, we love you. You're the best. Um, give us
[00:44:06] ROD: Amy 11
[00:44:07] WILL: stars. racing on all of the racing platforms. Yep. Uh, you can send an email at Cheers at a little bit of science.com au Usually sometimes on a Friday afternoon we stream on Twitch where you should engage. yeah,
[00:44:20] ROD: but
well there's a lot of people out there in Twitch land, so you've
[00:44:22] WILL: get in
Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's, you know,
[00:44:24] ROD: we're up to 4 million.
[00:44:25] WILL: What? Weird.
[00:44:26] ROD: Quite a
few.
