Speaker 1: Hello everyone, This is Amber Lewis from Docking Bay seventy
seven and you're listening to Surely you Can't Be Serious.
Even if you think you already know about the topic
the guys are discussing. They're sure to educate you and
give you some tidbits that you never heard before, and
it's always a great conversation. So sit back, relax, and
never forget hashtag team member.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely you Can't
Be Serious Podcast Special Edition five Minutes of Fire. We
are here talking about the lyrics of We Didn't Start
the Fire by Billy Joel. We're covering only five minutes
at a time, which is about to link with the song,
so it works out kind of nicely, so please join
us as we dived into some new lyrics today.
Speaker 3: All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're
going to be covering today.
Speaker 2: Cara wak sput Nick choo un Lai.
Speaker 3: Okay, do tell me about Carowac okay.
Speaker 2: Jack Harrowuac was a pioneer of the Beat generation. He
is on the Mount Rushmore with William S. Burrows and
Alan Ginsburg. As far as beat poetry and novelists go.
He was born French Canadian in Massachusetts. They only spoke
French in his house until he was six. Finally learned English,
and he spoke with a French accident until he was
in his late teens. And World War Two he served
in the US Merchant Marines. He wrote his first novel
while he was doing that, but it was not published,
at least not until forty years after he was dead.
The first published novel he had was called The Town
in the City, but his second novel, called On the Road,
in nineteen fifty seven, made him a Beat icon. He
went on to publish twelve more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
He is recognized for his stream of consciousness style. He
spoke about Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New
York City, Buddhism, drugs, drinking, poverty, all kinds of things.
He is considered, with the other Beats, a progeniture of
the hippie movement. He influenced Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia,
and The Doors. Nineteen sixty nine, at the tender age
of forty seven, he died from an abdominal morrhage. Caused
by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Okay, tell me about Sputnik.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Sputnik one.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Sputnik one is the first artificial Earth satellite and the
first human made object to orbit the Earth. This was
launched into a low Earth orbit by the Soviets October fourth,
nineteen fifty seven. When I say this caught the US
off guard and created public fear, that would be a
major understatement a little bit. The US collectively crapped their
pants when this happened. They digged the heck out. They
did not anticipate this at all. This demonstrated to the
US they were way behind in the space race. Okay,
so this actually caused Dwight Eisenhower to get ramped up
in the space race.
Speaker 2: Let's go.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: Sputnik one was designed to send radio signals back to
Earth for two weeks, but it actually lasted for three weeks.
When I looked at it, I was kind of impressed.
It looks like a beach ball with three antennas. It's
no big thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, have you ever sent a beach ball into space?
I have none?
Speaker 3: All right, then, the sphere weigh less than two hundred
pounds it could actually be seen from Earth, and actually
scientists could track and understand the atmosphere better by just
looking at it. So this was the dawn of the
space age. It orbited Earth fourteen hundred times and was
up and orbited around for about three months. Wow, and
scared the crap out of everybody in the US. Tell
me about Chow un LII.
Speaker 2: Well, it's probably pronounced zou and Lai chow and lie
zou and lae tomato tomato right right, okay. So he
was the Premier and Foreign Minister of the People's Republic
of China what we called Red China to throw back
to an earlier episode. He was popular and kind of
practical as far as administrators in China go. He was
part of the Great Leap Forward in nineteen fifty eight,
trying to bring industry and commerce to communists China, and
later on he would push for modernization to undo the
damage that was caused by the Cultural Revolution of nineteen
sixty six to nineteen seventy six. He was largely responsible
for the re establishment of contacts with the West, including
Nixon and his presidency. Interesting, are you okay, okay? Guys?
That does it for today's episode. Join us next time
for five minutes of fire