Podcasts about megatons

Sintonía: "Conga Twist" - The Revels"Native" - Bob Callaway & The Chicks (nueva); "Hi Yo Camel" - The Peeple; "Dragon Walk" - The Dantes (nueva); "Tequila Twist" - The Valiants; "Caravan" - Jerry Betters (nueva); "Oasis" (versión alargada) - The Majestics; "Loco" - The Terrifies (nueva); "Wild Man Walk" - The Ebonettes (nueva); "Don´t Wanna Leave The Congo" - Norman (Arab) Sands & The Valiants (nueva); "King Kong" - Tarantula Ghoul & Her Gravediggers (nueva); "Oongawa" - Johnny Parker & The Zirkons (nueva); "Uprising" - The Cherokees; "Kana Kapila" - The Continental Cousins; "The Kookie Limbo" - Kookie Joe; "Screw Driver" - The Rhythmaires (nueva); "Baghdad Rock" - The Sheiks (nueva); "Clumsy Dragon" - The Five Sounds (nueva); "Isis" - The Megatons (nueva)Todas las músicas extraídas de la recopilación (2xLP) "Jungle Exotica Volume 1" (Strip, 2013); una reedición ampliada de una primera recopilación de 20 cortes en un solo vinilo realizada por el mismo sello y publicada 22 años antes (Strip, 1991)Escuchar audio

You don't need us to say it: The 2024 election will have enormous stakes for America's climate policy and the planet's climate. But how well can we quantify those stakes? What would a Trump presidency — or a Harris presidency, for that matter — really mean for the country's emissions trajectory? On this week's episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob speak with Sonia Aggarwal, the chief executive officer of Energy Innovation, a climate policy think tank that operates across North America, Europe, and Asia. She was previously special assistant to the president for climate policy, innovation, and deployment under President Joe Biden, and she co-chaired the Biden administration's Climate Innovation Working Group. She and Jesse — another top-notch modeler — dive into what the data can and can't tell us about the election and how to think about energy system models in the first place. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.Mentioned: The REPEAT Project's annual report on U.S. emissions pathwaysEnergy Innovation's report: “The Second Half of the Decisive Decade”Jesse's upshift; Rob's upshift.--This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …Watershed's climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.Antenna Group helps you connect with customers, policymakers, investors, and strategic partners to influence markets and accelerate adoption. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Badiali, Editor of the New energy Investor published under the Mangrove Investor joins us to discuss his renewed bullishness for Uranium.    Matt discusses the significant shift in Japan's energy policies, particularly their renewed commitment to nuclear energy. This change is driven by Japan's need to reduce its dependency on imported fuels and to support high-energy-consuming industries like data centers and chip manufacturing. The potential restart of nuclear reactors, especially the vast Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, could increase global uranium demand, potentially driving up prices.    Matt also highlights the broader international context, with several countries ramping up their nuclear energy capabilities. We look at the challenges of uranium supply, noting the depleted stockpiles in Japan and the end of the Megatons to Megawatts program. Despite a recent dip in uranium prices, Matt is optimistic about another upward trend due to burgeoning demand.   The conversation touches on uranium stocks and discusses significant companies like NextGen Energy and the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust. Matt emphasizes the importance of jurisdiction and the need for more uranium production to meet future demands. The discussion also covers the Athabasca Basin, known for its high-grade uranium resources, and the need for diligent exploration and management.   Click here to visit the Mangrove Investor website to follow along with Matt.

This week we discuss the cultural impact that the Bombs dropped on Japan had for its people. And we also discuss how that was broadly shown through our favorite Kaiju: Godzilla. While most of these monster movies were just about creatures fighting for the mass enjoyment of moviegoers, there still was a deeper meaning to a few of these creatures. Tune in as we consider binge watching 30 plus Godzilla movies.Thanks for listening and remember to like, rate, review, and email us at: cultscryptidsconspiracies@gmail.com or tweet us at @C3Podcast. Also check out our Patreon: www.patreon.com/cultscryptidsconspiracies. Thank you to T.J. Shirley for our theme.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4145155/advertisement

Apoie o Café Belgrado no www.cafebelgrado.com.br e tenha acesso a uma variedade de séries exclusivas que vão te encantar:1.   "Não Aprendi Dizer Adeus": Descubra tudo sobre os jogadores eliminados da temporada 2022/2023 e suas trajetórias emocionantes.2.   "Amanhã Vai Ser Outro Dia": Acompanhe a análise da próxima classe de Draft e fique por dentro dos talentos que estão prestes a brilhar nas quadras.3.   "O Reinado": Mergulhe na emocionante história de LeBron James em três temporadas incríveis, divididas em 23 episódios repletos de drama e superação. Temporada 1: A chegada de LeBron ao Cavs; Temporada 2: LeBron e os Heatles; Temporada 3: O retorno ao Cavs.4.   "The Next Dance: A História de Luka Doncic": Explore os seis episódios disponíveis e conheça a trajetória fascinante do talentoso jogador Luka Doncic.5.   "Belgramadness": Viaje pelo tempo e acompanhe a história de todas as classes de Draft de 2000 a 2015, revelando curiosidades e momentos marcantes.6.   "El Gringo": Descubra a história de jogadores estrangeiros que deixaram sua marca na NBA. Cada personagem tem um episódio dedicado a sua trajetória. Atualmente disponíveis: Oscar Schmidt, Manu Ginóbili, Steve Nash, Arvydas Sabonis, Hedo Turkoglu, Dikembe Mutombo, Yao Ming, Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Rik Smits e Andrei Kirilenko.7.   "Perfis de Estrelas da NBA": Explore os bastidores das finais de 2021 e conheça os perfis de Ayton, Cp3, Booker, Mikal Bridges, Monty Williams, Mike Budenholzer, Giannis, Kris Middleton, Brook Lopez e Jrue Holiday.8.   "BelgraVerso": Viaje por realidades paralelas da NBA com a série "what if". Descubra episódios emocionantes como: E se Curry não tivesse ido para o Golden State? E se Melo tivesse jogado pelos Pistons? Cp3 assina com os Lakers! Hayward sem lesões no Celtics! Derrick Rose sem lesões. O Draft de 2017 de outra forma. Harden permanecendo no OKC!9.   "MIP Hunters": Conheça as futuras estrelas da liga e acompanhe suas jornadas em ascensão.10. "Esquema de Pirâmide": Desvende os melhores da liga em diferentes dinâmicas, explorando episódios envolventes e cheios de surpresas.11. "F.A.D.I.N.H.A.": Mergulhe na análise detalhada da Free Agency e fique por dentro das movimentações mais importantes do mercado.Além disso, temos muitos outros conteúdos empolgantes esperando por você! Não perca a chance de se tornar parte dessa comunidade apaixonada por basquete e desfrute de uma experiência incrível no Café Belgrado. Assine agora em www.cafebelgrado.com.br!

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about one of the most mysterious disasters of the modern world—The Tunguska Event. Early one morning in the summer of 1908, a massive explosion ripped through the heart of Russia. It was estimated to be around 15 megatons of explosive force that destroyed the land for miles. The common theory is that it was a hard metal asteroid that hit, but the theory loses steam since there is no crater to suggest impact. This leads to massive expeditions into the wilds of Siberia and theories that range from comet tails to subatomic blackholes and even a super weapon developed ty Nicola Tesla!   Visit Our Sources: https://www.britannica.com/event/Tunguska-event https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30jun_tunguska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event https://earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-tunguska-explosion/ https://astronomy.com/news/2020/10/tunguska-explosion-in-1908-caused-by-asteroid-grazing-earth https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-tunguska-mystery-100-years-later/ https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg17623644-800-tesla-and-tunguska/ https://www.teslasociety.com/tunguska.htm https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/02/15/crazy-conspiracy-theories-are-already-taking-root-after-russias-meteor/ https://www.nature.com/articles/245088a0

Primer garbeo por la huerta ibérica de 2023, en busca de novedades de entre todos nuestros estilos favoritos. Playlist; LOS FUSILES “El intento” (A mano armada, 2023) ESCRIBANO “Estallar” (En el camino está la perla, 2022) LAGARTIJA NICK “No me parece ni bien ni mal” (Perro andaluz, 2022) HEROÍNAS “Ella es así” (Hocus Pocus, 2022) HEROÍNAS “Linda Sabe” (Hocus Pocus, 2022) Versión y original; THE VELVET UNDERGROUND “Candy says” (The Velvet Underground, 1969) ARDE “Himno a la clase media” (ST, 2022) STAY “I can hear the grass grow” (7’’, 2022) WEE HEYS “Hide myself” (Sounds of punk and roll, 2023) SCREAMIN’ WITCH DOCTORS “Gliter and gold” (Back from Transylvania, 2022) SANDRÉ “Peor” (Gestiones fáciles, 2022) FUNDACIÓN FRANCISCO FRANKENSTEIN “Todo lo contrario” (adelanto próximo álbum) PERRITO CALIENTE “Solo fue una vez” (7’’ EP, 2022) MIGHTY MEGATONS “Gengis Khan” (7’’, 2022) BRIATORE “No saben bailar” (adelanto del álbum “Plan B”) Escuchar audio

Devin: Look at that skill set that you’ve got. What do you see as your superpower within that skill set that will allow you to make this happen?Peet: I haven’t been looking forward to that question. It’s difficult to introspect, and, well, it’s bold and brave to say this is my superpower. So, I asked around and, you know, my friends and family, ‘What would you say to this?” I recognize what they said, which is I’m an evangelist. One of them said storytelling; another one said optimism. And I think those two things come together to be evangelism.”Peet Denny didn’t always focus on the environment. As a tech entrepreneur, he had a successful career. When in 2019, he became convinced that climate change was a real threat to humanity, “I decided to throw myself into it and devote the rest of my life to it.”Peet has no delusions that this will be easy. “Climate change is a natural consequence of the human condition of who we are as human beings.”His conclusion: “If we’re going to tackle climate change, then almost everything about the way that we live our lives needs to change.”Never mind the difficulty, “I’m an optimist,” Peet says. “I think we’ve got a good chance of pulling this off.”He compares the system and economic changes we’re beginning to the changes experienced during the Renaissance or the industrial revolution.His optimism shows in his thinking about the future:If we do pull it off, then the world that we will create will be a much more fun place to live. It'll be a place with way more equality. It'll be a place with more prosperity for for all, where we understand better how to live in harmony with with our surroundings, where we get the best out of it and it gets the best out of us.Never miss an episode. Subscribe!Climate VCTo go after his vision for the future, Peet raised a venture fund to deploy in climate change reversing enterprises. The fund is called Climate VC.“Almost everything needs to change. So the problem space is very large. That means that the solution space is also really large,” he says, explaining the firm’s wide lens looking across sectors.To make the point of breadth, he rattles off a wide range of examples:Transports, like how we move around, how we how we feed ourselves, how we make things out of out of steel, out of concrete, our plastic, how we generate energy, how we how we circularize our economy, how we how we grow food. All of those things. How we how we educate ourselves, how we how we redistribute wealth across the across the planet. All of those things kind of need to change. And so those those are kind of the verticals that we look at.One of the critical points of reference he uses is the work of Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that published one of the bestselling books on climate change, called Drawdown. Project Drawdown maintains a list of the top 100 climate interventions based on existing and implemented technology, things that simply need scale.Peet is excited about using the tools of venture capital applied in a new way. Traditionally, VCs use their tools to identify entrepreneurs capable of growing a billion-dollar enterprise, a “unicorn,” as such companies are known. “We try and use those tools to find companies that could become gig-icorns, companies that could have a 1 billion ton impact.”“The way to do that is to find people who are extraordinary and see what we can do to help out,” he says.Peet summarizes the plan for reaching the gigaton goal: If we invest in 120 startups over the next three years, and if ten of them get to where they want to get—most companies in early stage venture don't. But if ten of them get to where they want to get and they're each having a ten megaton scale impact a year for ten years, then ten by ten by ten, that's our gigaton.Peet shared a story to help us understand where he gets the optimism that he can lead a gigaton effort and that the world can reverse climate change before it’s too late:I started doing triathlons like all—like many—middle aged men do. And I worked towards this long term goal of doing an Ironman like a full, full distance triathlon.That just kept knocking me back time and again, time and again. I remember like being at training camps where I was, you know, cycling next to a 60 year old woman. And I was like early thirties, dude. And I just couldn't keep up with it. And I'd fall off the back of the pack and it just it just kept kicking me in the pants the whole time for years. Eventually just through bone headedness, I managed to train for and do a full Ironman. And the whole time I was doing it, I wanted to quit—the whole time. But I didn't. I finished it.I think psychologically that that changed something in me. It made me realize maybe anything is possible. Maybe, maybe I need to raise my ambitions.Screening OpportunitiesFinding and investing in 120 companies over the next three years will take a new strategy for screening opportunities.“We, first of all, challenged the founders to show us a plan that will get you to ten megatons a year,” Peet says.Then, he has scientists review the plans to determine if the founders really can achieve that scale of impact. If they pass, he scrutinizes the team. More conventional commercial due diligence follows. Finally, he looks for the “unknown unknowns” to avoid traps.“We’re not just looking for deals that have already been pre-approved by others,” Peet says, to emphasize his goal to help people do what others aren’t already doing. “the reason I got into this game in the first place is to try and make things happen that wouldn’t otherwise have happened.”Part of that process is to have a more comprehensive deal funnel. “We’re trying to listen to people that other people aren’t listening to,” he says.To be successful with his gigaton goal by attracting 120 entrepreneurs to back, he’ll use his evangelism superpower.How to Develop Evangelism As a SuperpowerEvangelism can be powerful. Consider what Peet did.“Well, I mean, I raised a venture capital fund. I went from being a complete noob in this space to raising some money, hiring some people, bringing in an amazing board. I mean, I’ve got directors from Google and Greenpeace and Nature on my board. That’s incredible.”It is an extraordinary accomplishment.Peet sees optimism and storytelling as component skills of evangelism. Especially for his work. If his pitch were that the world is ending, who would invest? Optimism is essential. His ability to tell a story, as he did with the Iron Man story, to make a powerful point about our ability to do virtually anything complements his natural optimism.He offers some more straightforward and profound advice. “Just just be yourself, man.”Acknowledging that it could be considered cliche, he encourages others not to be afraid to be enthusiastic. Similarly, he advises people not to be ashamed of their roots. Be who you are.He acknowledges that some people may be put off but says it will create a genuine connection with others. Therein lies the power of evangelism built on authenticity.If you strive to follow his example and heed his advice, you can make evangelism your superpower for good.In this article, we have used affiliate links, which may generate commissions if you make a purchase but that do not increase your cost. Get full access to Superpowers for Good at devinthorpe.substack.com/subscribe

How long would it take to cook a pizza outside on Venus? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice discuss the physics of surface temperature, the size of ~wAvEs~, and the meaning of horsepower. Could horses get you to space? NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/things-you-thought-you-knew-venus-pizza/ Thanks to our Patrons Kyle W Odren, Frank Kotarski, John Pologruto, Corina Szabo, Shera, Bogdan Pop, Corey McKinney, Matthew Lichtenstein, and Richie Damiani for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: Image credit: NASA/JPL See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Its a basic truism but every material object that we use as humans that we did not farm or harvest from the land was mined. In the developed world we have offshored much of this mining activity and it is thus largely invisible to us. How do we decouple mining from its environmental impacts? Stringent regulation of environmental and labour practices. How does modern Uranium mining measure up?  With plans for an energy transition away from fossil fuels comes major mining implications. Replacing energy dense coal, oil and gas with dilute sources and storage mediums like wind, solar and batteries will lead to the biggest expansion of mining in world history according to Mark P Mills. Meanwhile the decarbonisation impact of uranium mining is uttlery overlooked.  Uranium has by far the lowest mining impact per unit of energy of any comparable fuel source. Several mines in Saskatchewan, Canada, that occupy a tiny land footprint produce enough Uranium to supply 20% of the world's nuclear power fleet which provides 4% of global primary energy. Thus Saskatchewans uranium mines can meet almost 1% of global primary energy demand.  Jerry Grandey was previously the CEO of Cameco Corporation, one of the world's largest Uranium producers. In 2011, he was nominated for the Oslo Business for Peace Award in recognition of his efforts to facilitate the dismantling of 20,000 Russian warheads (The Megatons to Megawatts program), with the resulting uranium used in nuclear energy plants for the generation of electricity.  

Show #702   Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Wednesday 19th February 2020. It’s Martyn Lee here and I go through every EV story to save you time.   Thank you to MYEV.com for helping make this show, they’ve built the first marketplace specifically for Electric Vehicles. It’s a totally free marketplace that simplifies the buying and selling process, and help you learn about EVs along the way too.   95.6 GWH OF EV BATTERY CAPACITY DEPLOYED GLOBALLY IN 2019 "In 2019, 95.6 GWh of battery capacity was deployed globally in newly sold passenger EVs, an increase of 30% over the year prior, according to Adamas Intelligence’s web-based EV Battery Capacity and Battery Metals Tracker." reports Green Can Congress: "At the global level, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) were responsible for 90% of all passenger EV battery capacity deployed in 2019, followed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) with 7% and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) with the remaining 3%."   https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/02/20200218-adamas.html   MOBILITY 2020: WHAT THE YEAR HAS IN STORE More than 30,000 pre-bookers have registered in advance for an ID.3 r , and this year they will be able to take delivery of their car. This means that Volkswagen Group’s vision of building e-cars for the masses is now becoming reality. Further fully electric models from the ID. Family will follow in the coming years. By 2029, Volkswagen plans to launch up to 75 pure electric models across the Group, plus around 60 hybrid vehicles.   In 2020, the first two Volkswagen plants designed purely for electric cars will begin series production. In Anting and Foshan, the SAIC VOLKSWAGEN and FAW-Volkswagen joint ventures will produce around 600,000 pure electric vehicles on the MEB basis every year. MEB production “Made in China” is then to be gradually expanded to 15 different MEB models across different brands by 2025.   In 2020, stricter emission standards will come into force in India, opening a new chapter in the subcontinent’s passenger car market. In an unusual step, the government decided to skip one emission standard stage and switch directly from the current BS-IV (Euro 4) to BS-VI (Euro 6) standard. Thanks to timely developments, all Volkswagen Group models based on the ‘INDIA 2.0’ strategy will comply with these standards. With emissions of 2,654 Megatons, India is the third largest CO2 emitter worldwide after China and the USA.   In California, cars with low CO2 emissions have been allowed to use so-called HOV lanes (high-occupancy vehicle lane) since this year – even if only one person is in the car. These lanes are otherwise reserved for cars with at least two occupants. All vehicles that fall below specified emission levels are marked with a “clean air sticker”.   https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/02/mobility-2020-what-the-year-has-in-store-for-motorists.html   CITROËN C5 AIRCROSS PHEV UP FOR ORDER IN THE UK "Citroën has officially opened the order books for the new C5 Aircross plug-in hybrid in the UK. It is being offering it in two grades named the Flair and Flair Plus. Pricing starts at £35,340 and £36,815 respectively. Customer deliveries will begin in mid-2020." reports electrive: "the plug-in hybrid offers a system output of 165 kW, to which the electric motor contributes 80 kW. The battery with a capacity of 13.2 kWh enables a purely electric WLTP range of up to 50 kilometres."   https://www.electrive.com/2020/02/18/citroen-opens-uk-order-books-for-the-c5-aircross-phev/   TESLA MODEL S “RAVEN” HITS IMPRESSIVE 181 KW "A Tesla Model S was recently able to hit a peak charging rate of 181 kW during a Supercharging session. While the flagship sedan’s peak charge rate is still a bit behind the Model 3’s peak charge rate of 250 kW on a V3 Supercharger, it is nevertheless impressive, highlighting the fact that Tesla’s vehicles are in a constant state of improvement." says Simon Alvarez at Teslarati: "Tesla owner-enthusiast Eli Burton of the My Tesla Adventure YouTube channel recently paid a visit to the Fremont factory on his Raven Model S Performance. The vehicle only had 5% of charge left on its 100 kWh battery pack, giving the flagship sedan the opportunity to experience a full charging session on one of the site’s V3 Superchargers."   https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-hits-181-kwh-peak-supercharger-v3-video/   TESLA CAN SELL IN COLORADO, BUT RIVIAN CAN’T "A new bill, SB 167, has been introduced in Colorado which would allow electric vehicle manufacturers to bypass the state’s direct-sales ban." writes electrek: "Rivian is looking to follow a similar model as Tesla, as the model makes sense for them as well.  But they don’t fall under the same exception as Tesla in Colorado law, so they need this new bill to pass. Colorado is important for Rivian.  The state is one of the larger electric vehicle buyers in the US, coming in fourth place in per capita EV sales.  It’s also full of exactly the kind of adventure truck/SUV buyers Rivian is targeting with their R1T and R1S."   Read the full article here: https://electrek.co/2020/02/17/tesla-can-sell-in-colorado-but-rivian-cant-dealers-oppose-a-new-law-to-change-that/   NEW SERVICE CENTER ORANGE COUNTY - MODEL 3 ONLY! "We are excited to announce the opening of our newest Service Center in Santa Ana — designated for Model 3. Starting today, to improve the service experience for all owners, Santa Ana will only schedule Model 3 owners, while Costa Mesa will only schedule Model S and Model X owners. All other Service Centers in the area will continue to serve all Models. Schedule your next appointment with your Tesla app. For most repairs, Mobile Service will be selected when scheduling your appointment to have a technician come to you — the most convenient way of servicing your car. We look forward to delivering tailored service throughout Orange County."   User AEdennis: "That’s been the plan with Santa Ana and Costa Mesa for a while. Glad to see it publicized"   https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/new-service-center-orange-county-model-3-only.185467/   FORD MANAGER: "JUST BEING ELECTRIC IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH." Ted Cannis, Director Global Electrification at Ford Motor Company spoke.   "In Germany, many think that the fuel cell will come soon. Regardless of whether I speak to French, Canadians or Chinese, there are no concerns about the battery because customers are waiting for hydrogen. However, battery technology is now available, is constantly evolving, charging is becoming easier, the requirements of the government are moving in this direction and so are our competitors - there is currently a critical mass moving towards battery-electric cars."   "We have a lot of new customers who haven't owned a Ford yet. One of the dealers I spoke to has 12 reservations - all new customers. They are also more than ten years younger."   "Our experience has shown that the sound will not be an obstacle. We were on the road in the USA with prototypes of the electric F-150 pickup . Nobody missed the sound of a V8 there! This shocked us almost more than with the Mustang. On request, we will also have a very authentic sound in the Mustang Mach-E."   " the entire software can receive over-the-air updates so that the car stays fresh over the years. We want to offer our customers a modern user experience that develops over time - as they know it from websites or apps."   "the "FordPass" app. Here, our European customers can get access to over 125,000 charging points from the NewMotion roaming network and can easily bill for Ionity's HPC loaders and charging."   "With electric cars, the software is at least as important as the hardware, yes. Now we have a vehicle in which almost all modules can be updated. So why shouldn't we take advantage of this to provide improvements to the customer? And of course, for that we have to constantly develop the software."   "The battery cells come from LG Chem from Poland. From there they are shipped to Mexico, where we assemble them into ready-to-install battery packs - right next to the production of the Mustang Mach-E. Until recently, we only had a few hybrids in Europe, but Ford has been using lithium-ion batteries since 2012. "   https://www.electrive.net/2020/02/15/ford-manager-nur-elektrisch-zu-sein-ist-nicht-gut-genug/   SINGAPORE BUDGET 2020: PUSH TO PROMOTE ELECTRIC VEHICLES "After declaring its ambition to phase out internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2040, Singapore will make electric vehicles more attractive from next year (2021)." says StraitsTimes.com: "In his Budget speech on Tuesday (Feb 18), Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat laid out a number of measures to do this.he Vehicular Emissions Scheme, which metes out tax rebates and surcharges based on a vehicle's emission levels, will be extended to light commercial vehicles. an early-adoption incentive scheme will be rolled out for EV buyers from 2021 to 2023. It will offer rebates capped at $20,000 per vehicle."   https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/singapore-budget-2020-push-to-promote-evs-in-move-to-phase-out-petrol-and-diesel   VOLKSWAGEN PLOTS RUGGED ELECTRIC 4X4 SUV FOR 2023 "Volkswagen is on the verge of giving the green light to a new ID-branded SUV to rival the upcoming BMW iX3 and Mercedes-Benz EQB. " according to Autocar.co.uk "The electric-powered SUV is known to officials at Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters in Germany as the Ruggdzz, a working title that draws on the word ‘rugged’.  Although it is still at a preliminary stage of development, the new ID model is expected to enter production in 2023 as part of a 30-strong SUV line-up planned by Volkswagen by the middle of the decade."   https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/volkswagen-plots-rugged-electric-4x4-suv-2023   NEW QUESTION OF THE WEEK The MYEV.com Question Of The Week…   Are you happy to pay extra for add-on features or apps for your EV, after you’ve bought it?   I want to say a heartfelt thank you to the 235 patrons of this podcast whose generosity means I get to keep making this show, which aims to entertain and inform thousands of listeners every day about a brighter future. By no means do you have to check out Patreon but if it’s something you’ve been thinking about, by all means look at patreon.com/evnewsdaily   [mention for Premium Partners]   You can listen to all 701 previous episodes of this this for free, where you get your podcasts from, plus the blog https://www.evnewsdaily.com/ – remember to subscribe, which means you don’t have to think about downloading the show each day, plus you get it first and free and automatically.   It would mean a lot if you could take 2mins to leave a quick review on whichever platform you download the podcast.   And if you have an Amazon Echo, download our Alexa Skill, search for EV News Daily and add it as a flash briefing.   Come and say hi on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter just search EV News Daily, have a wonderful day, I’ll catch you tomorrow and remember…there’s no such thing as a self-charging hybrid.     PHIL ROBERTS / ELECTRIC FUTURE (PREMIUM PARTNER) BRAD CROSBY (PREMIUM PARTNER) AVID TECHNOLOGY (PREMIUM PARTNER) BRIGHTSMITHGROUP.COM – FOR CLEANTECH TALENT (PREMIUM PARTNER)   DAVID ALLEN (PARTNER) OEM AUDIO OF NEW ZEALAND AND EVPOWER.CO.NZ (PARTNER) PAUL O’CONNOR (PARTNER) TRYEV.COM (PARTNER) GARETH HAMER eMOBILITY NORWAY HTTPS://WWW.EMOBILITYNORWAY.COM/  (PARTNER) BOB BOOTHBY (PARTNER) ALAN ROBSON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ALAN SHEDD (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ALEX BANAHENE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ALEXANDER FRANK @ https://www.youtube.com/c/alexsuniverse42 ANDERS HOVE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ANDREA JEFFERSON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ASEER KHALID (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ASHLEY HILL (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) BÅRD FJUKSTAD (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) BRENT KINGSFORD (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) BRIAN THOMPSON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) BRIAN WEATHERALL (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) BRUCE BOHANNAN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) CHARLES HALL (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) CHRIS HOPKINS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) COLIN HENNESSY (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) CRAIG COLES (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) CRAIG ROGERS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DAMIEN DAVIS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DAN FAIRS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DARREN BYRD (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DARREN FEATCH (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DARREN SANT FROM YORKSHIRE EV CLUB (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DAVE DEWSON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DAVID BARKMAN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DAVID FINCH (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DAVID PARTINGTON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DAVID PRESCOTT (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) DEREK REILLY FROM THE DUBLIN EV OWNERS CLUB DON MCALLISTER / SCREENCASTSONLINE.COM (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ENRICO STEPHAN-SCHILOW (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) FREDRIK ROVIK (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) FREEJOULE AKA JAMES (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) GENE RUBIN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) GEOFF LOWE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) HEDLEY WRIGHT (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) IAN GRIFFITHS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) IAN SEAR (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JACK OAKLEY (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JAMES STORR (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JERRY ALLISON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JIM MORRIS (EXECUTIVE PRODICERS) JOHN BAILEY (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JOHN C SOLAR (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JOHN LACEY FROM CLICK CLACK VIDEO NZ (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JON AKA BEARDY MCBEARDFACE FROM KENT EVS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JON KNODEL (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) JUAN GONZALEZ (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) KEN MORRIS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) KEVIN MEYERSON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) KYLE MAHAN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) LARS DAHLAGER (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) LAURENCE D ALLEN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) LEE BROWN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) LUKE CULLEY (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MARCEL LOHMANN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MARCEL WARD (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MARK BOSSERT (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MARLIN SCHELL (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MATT PISCIONE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MAZ SHAR (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MIA OPPELSTRUP (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MICHAEL PASTRONE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MICHEAEL KYFFIN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MIKE ROGERS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) MIKE WINTER (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) NATHAN GORE-BROWN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) NEIL E ROBERTS FROM SUSSEX EVS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) NORTHERN EXPLORERS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) OHAD ASTON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) PAUL RIDINGS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) PAUL SHELLEY ((EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) PAUL STEPHENSON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) PERRY SIMPKINS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) PETE GLASS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) PETE GORTON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) PETER & DEE ROBERTS FROM OXON EVS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER)  PHIL MOUCHET (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) PONTUS KINDBLAD (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) RAJEEV NARAYAN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) RALPH JENSON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) RENÉ SCHNEIDER (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ROB COOLING / HTTP://WWW.APPLEDRIVING.CO.UK/ (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ROB HERMANS (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ROBERT GRACE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) ROBIN TANNER (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) RUPERT MITCHELL (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) SARI KANGASOJA (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) SEIKI PAYNE (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) STEPHEN PENN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) STEVE JOHN (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) THOMAS J. 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Will nuclear power mishaps like Chernobyl and Fukushima bring about an early Armageddon? Or is it our best chance to avoid further climate catastrophe? Arjuna and Robin hash out the bright side and the not so bright side of nuclear energy and look at just how it measures up against other energy source options.Update: We say in the show that 10% of electricity came from the Megatons to Megawatts program.  I fact checked this and sources say "up to 10%", so it probably was quite a bit lower than that for parts of the program's 2 decade life cycle.This episode features music from the following artists (in order of appearance):Mac Woodruff - "Vis Insita"Find Mac Woodruff's music at Bandcamp and on SoundcloudKneebody - "Dr. Beauchef, Penguin Dentist"Find Kneebody at https://www.kneebody.com/ and on SpotifyEero Johannes - "Lipton Service Boy"Find Eero Johannes's music on Soundcloud and SpotifyOur logo was done with help from Megan Brandenburg Design who can be contacted via her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meganbrandenburgdesign/Follow us on Twitter to keep updated on our show.Join the ongoing discussion on Discord.Email questions and comments to listeningglasscast@gmail.com.Until next time...

    Episode fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Flying Saucers Rock 'n' Roll" by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and at the flying saucer craze of the fifties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Silhouettes" by the Rays, and the power of subliminal messages. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I'm relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. I've also relied on a lot of websites for this one, including this very brief outline of Riley's life in his own words.   There are many compilations of Riley's music. This one, from Bear Family, is probably the most comprehensive collection of his fifties work.  The Patreon episode on "The Flying Saucer", for backers who've not heard it, is at https://www.patreon.com/posts/27855307 Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   ERRATUM I mistakenly said “Jack Earl” instead of Jack Earls at one point.   Transcript   Let's talk about flying saucers for a minute. One aspect of 1950s culture that probably requires a little discussion at this point is the obsession in many quarters with the idea of alien invasion. Of course, there were the many, many, films on the subject that filled out the double bills and serials, things like "Flying Disc Man From Mars", "Radar Men From The Moon", "It Came From Outer Space", "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers", and so on. But those films, campy as they are, reveal a real fascination with the idea that was prevalent throughout US culture at the time. While the term "flying saucer" had been coined in 1930, it really took off in June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a Minnesotan pilot, saw nine disc-shaped objects in the air while he was flying. Arnold's experience has entered into legend as the canonical "first flying saucer sighting", mostly because Arnold seems to have been, before the incident, a relatively stable person -- or at least someone who gave off all the signals that were taken as signs of stability in the 1940s. Arnold seems to have just been someone who saw something odd, and wanted to find out what it was that he'd seen. But eventually two different groups of people seem to have dominated the conversation -- religious fanatics who saw in Arnold's vision a confirmation of their own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible, and people who believed that the things Arnold had seen came from another planet. With no other explanations forthcoming, he turned to the people who held to the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being comparatively the saner option. Over the next few years, so did a significant proportion of the American population. The same month as Kenneth Arnold saw his saucers, a nuclear test monitoring balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. A farmer who found some of the debris had heard reports of Arnold's sightings, and put two and two together and made space aliens. The Government didn't want to admit that the balloon had been monitoring nuclear tests, and so various cover stories were put out, which in turn led to the belief in aliens becoming ever more widespread. And this tied in with the nuclear paranoia that was sweeping the nation. It was widely known, of course, that both the USA and Russia were working on space programmes -- and that those space programmes were intimately tied in with the nuclear missiles they were also developing. While it was never stated specifically, it was common knowledge that the real reason for the competition between the two nations to build rockets was purely about weapons delivery, and that the civilian space programme was, in the eyes of both governments if not the people working on it, merely a way of scaring the other side with how good the rockets were, without going so far that they might accidentally instigate a nuclear conflict. When you realise this, Little Richard's terror at the launch of Sputnik seems a little less irrational, and so does the idea that there might be aliens from outer space. So, why am I talking about flying saucers? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that, among other things, this podcast is a cultural history of the latter part of the twentieth century, and you can't understand anything about the mid twentieth century without understanding the deeply weird paranoid ideas that would sweep the culture. The second is that it inspired a whole lot of records. One of those, "the Flying Saucer", I've actually already looked at briefly in one of the Patreon bonus episodes, but is worth a mention here -- it was a novelty record that was a very early example of sampling: [Excerpt: Buchanan and Goodman, "The Flying Saucer"] And there'd been "Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer" by Ella Fitzgerald: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer"] But today we're going to look at one of the great rockabilly records, by someone who was one of the great unsung acts on Sun Records: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll"] Billy Lee Riley was someone who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time -- for example, when he got married after leaving the army, he decided to move with his new wife to Memphis, and open a restaurant. The problem was that neither of them knew Memphis particularly well, and didn't know how bad the area they were opening it in was. The restaurant was eventually closed down by the authorities after only three months, after a gunfight between two of their customers. But there was one time when he was in precisely the right place at the right time. He was an unsuccessful, down on his luck, country singer in 1955, when he was driving on Christmas morning, from his in-laws' house in Arkansas to his parents' house three miles away, and he stopped to pick up two hitch-hikers. Those two hitch-hikers were Cowboy Jack Clement and Ronald "Slim" Wallace, two musicians who were planning on setting up their own record company. Riley was so interested in their conversation that while he'd started out just expecting to drive them the three miles he was going, he ended up driving them the more than seventy miles to Memphis. Clement and Wallace invited Riley to join their label. They actually had little idea of how to get into the record business -- Clement was an ex-Marine and aspiring writer, who was also a dance instructor -- he had no experience or knowledge of dancing when he became a dance instructor, but had decided that it couldn't be that difficult. He also played pedal steel in a Western Swing band led by someone called Sleepy-Eyed John Epley. Wallace, meanwhile, was a truck driver who worked weekends as a bass player and bandleader, and Clement had joined Wallace's band as well as Epley's. They regularly commuted between Arkansas, where Wallace owned a club, and Memphis, where Clement was based, and on one of their journeys, Clement, who had been riding in the back seat, had casually suggested to Wallace that they should get into the record business. Wallace would provide the resources -- they'd use his garage as a studio, and finance it with his truck-driving money -- while Clement would do the work of actually converting the garage into a studio. But before they were finished, they'd been out drinking in Arkansas on Christmas Eve with Wallace's wife and a friend, and Clement and the friend had been arrested for drunkenness. Wallace's wife had driven back to Memphis to be home for Christmas day, while Wallace had stayed on to bail out Clement and hitch-hike back with him. They hadn't actually built their studio yet, as such, but they were convinced it was going to be great when they did, and when Riley picked them up he told them what a great country singer he was, and they all agreed that when they did get the studio built they were going to have Riley be the first artist on their new label, Fernwood Records. In the meantime, Riley was going to be the singer in their band, because he needed the ten or twelve dollars a night he could get from them. So for a few months, Riley performed with Clement and Wallace in their band, and they slowly worked out an act that would show Riley's talents off to their best advantage. By May, Clement still hadn't actually built the studio -- he'd bought a tape recorder and a mixing board from Sleepy-Eyed John Epley, but he hadn't quite got round to making Wallace's garage into a decent space for recording in. So Clement and Wallace pulled together a group of musicians, including a bass player, because Clement didn't think Wallace was good enough, Johnny Bernero, the drummer who'd played on Elvis' last Sun session, and a guitarist named Roland Janes, and rented some studio time from a local radio station. They recorded the two sides of what was intended to be the first single on Fernwood Records, "Rock With Me Baby": [Excerpt: Billy Lee RIley, "Rock With Me Baby"] So they had a tape, but they needed to get it properly mastered to release it as a single. The best place in town to do that was at Memphis Recording Services, which Sam Phillips was still keeping going even though he was now having a lot of success with Sun. Phillips listened to the track while he was mastering it, and he liked it a lot. He liked it enough, in fact, that he made an offer to Clement -- rather than Clement starting up his own label, would he sell the master to Phillips, and come and work for Sun records instead? He did, leaving Slim Wallace to run Fernwood on his own, and for the last few years that Sun was relevant, Cowboy Jack Clement was one of the most important people working for the label -- second only to Sam Phillips himself. Clement would end up producing sessions by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. But his first session was to produce the B-side to the Billy Lee Riley record. Sam Phillips hadn't liked their intended B-side, so they went back into the studio with the same set of musicians to record a "Heartbreak Hotel" knockoff called "Trouble Bound": [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, "Trouble Bound"] That was much more to Sam's liking, and the result was released as Billy Lee Riley's first single. Riley and the musicians who had played on that initial record became the go-to people for Clement when he wanted musicians to back Sun's stars. Roland Janes, in particular, is someone whose name you will see on the credits for all sorts of Sun records from mid-56 onwards. Riley, too, would play on sessions -- usually on harmonica, but occasionally on guitar, bass, or piano. There's one particularly memorable moment of Riley on guitar at the end of Jerry Lee Lewis' first single, a cover version of Ray Price's "Crazy Arms". That song had been cut more as a joke than anything else, with Janes, who couldn't play bass, on bass. Right at the end of the song, Riley picked up a guitar, and hit a single wrong chord, just after everyone else had finished playing, and while their sound was dying away: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Crazy Arms"] Sam Phillips loved that track, and released it as it was, with Riley's guitar chord on it. Riley, meanwhile, started gigging regularly, with a band consisting of Janes on guitar, new drummer Jimmy Van Eaton, and, at first, Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, all of whom would play regularly on any Sun sessions that needed musicians. Now, we're going to be talking about Jerry Lee Lewis in a couple of weeks, so I don't want to talk too much about him here, but you'll have noticed that we already talked about him quite a bit in the episode on "Matchbox". Jerry Lee Lewis was one of those characters who turn up everywhere, and even before he was a star, he was making a huge impression on other people's lives. So while this isn't an episode about him, you will see his effect on Riley's career. He's just someone who insists on pushing into the story before it's his turn. Jerry Lee was the piano player on Riley's first session for Sun proper. The song on that session was brought in by Roland Janes, who had a friend, Ray Scott, who had written a rock and roll song about flying saucers. Riley loved the song, but Phillips thought it needed something more -- it needed to sound like it came from outer space. They still didn't have much in the way of effects at the Sun studios -- just the reverb system Phillips had cobbled together -- but Janes had a tremolo bar on his guitar. These were a relatively new invention -- they'd only been introduced on the Fender Stratocaster a little over two years earlier, and they hadn't seen a great deal of use on records yet. Phillips got Janes to play making maximum use of the tremolo arm, and also added a ton of reverb, and this was the result: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll"] Greil Marcus later said of that track that it was "one of the weirdest of early rock 'n' roll records - and early rock 'n' roll records were weird!" -- and he's right. "Flying Saucers Rock & Roll" is a truly odd recording, even by the standards of Sun Records in 1957. When Phillips heard that back, he said "Man that’s it. You sound like a bunch of little green men from Mars!" -- and then immediately realised that that should be the name of Riley's backing band. So the single came out as by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and the musicians got themselves a set of matching green suits to wear at gigs, which they bought at Lansky's on Beale Street. Those suits caused problems, though, as they were made of a material which soaked up sweat, which was a problem given how frantically active Riley's stage show was -- at one show at the Arkansas State University Riley jumped on top of the piano and started dancing -- except the piano turned out to be on wheels, and rolled off the stage. Riley had to jump up and cling on to a steel girder at the top of the stage, dangling from it by one arm, while holding the mic in the other, and gesturing frantically for people to get him down. You can imagine that with a show like that, absorbent material would be a problem, and sometimes the musicians would lie on their backs to play solos and get the audiences excited, and then find it difficult to get themselves back to their feet again, because their suits were so heavy. Riley's next single was a cover of a blues song first recorded by another Sun artist, Billy "the Kid" Emerson, in 1955. "Red Hot" had been based on a schoolyard chant: [Excerpt: Billy "the Kid" Emerson, "Red Hot"] While "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll" had been a local hit, but not a national one, Billy was confident that his version of "Red Hot" would be the record that would make him into a national star: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, "Red Hot"] The song was recorded either at the same session as "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll" or at one a couple of weeks later with a different pianist -- accounts vary -- but it was put on the shelf for six months, and in that six months Riley toured promoting "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll", and also carried on playing on sessions for Sun. He played bass on "Take Me To That Place" by Jack Earls: [Excerpt: Jack Earls, "Take Me To That Place"]  Rhythm guitar on "Miracle of You" by Hannah Fay: [Excerpt: Hannah Fay, "Miracle of You"] And much more. But he was still holding out hopes for the success of "Red Hot", which Sam Phillips kept telling him was going to be his big hit. And for a while it looked like that might be the case. Dewey Phillips played the record constantly, and Alan Freed tipped it to be a big hit. But for some reason, while it was massive in Memphis, the track did nothing at all outside the area -- the Memphis musician Jim Dickinson once said that he had never actually realised that "Red Hot" hadn't been a hit until he moved to Texas and nobody there had heard it, because everyone in Memphis knew the song. Riley and his band continued recording for Sun, both recording for themselves and as backup musicians for other artists. For example Hayden Thompson's version of Little Junior Parker's "Love My Baby", another rockabilly cover of an old Sun blues track, was released shortly after "Red Hot", credited to Thompson "with Billy Lee Riley's band [and] Jerry Lee Lewis' 'pumping piano'": [Excerpt: Hayden Thompson, "Love My Baby"]  But Riley was starting to get suspicious. "Red Hot" should have been a hit, it was obvious to him. So why hadn't it been? Riley became convinced that what had happened was that Sam Phillips had decided that Riley and his band were more valuable to him as session musicians, backing Jerry Lee Lewis and whoever else came into the studio, than as stars themselves. He would later claim that he had actually seen piles of orders for "Red Hot" come in from record shops around the country, and Sam Phillips phoning the stores up and telling them he was sending them Jerry Lee Lewis records instead. He also remembered that Sam had told him to come off the road from a package tour to record an album -- and had sent Jerry Lee out on the tour in his place. He became convinced that Sam Phillips was deliberately trying to sabotage his career. He got drunk, and he got mad. He went to Sun studios, where Sam Phillips' latest girlfriend, Sally, was working, and started screaming at her, and kicked a hole in a double bass. Sally, terrified, called Sam, who told her to lock the doors, and to on no account let Riley leave the building. Sam came to the studio and talked Riley down, explaining to him calmly that there was no way he would sabotage a record on his own label -- that just wouldn't make any sense. He said "“Red Hot” ain’t got it. We’re saving you for something good.’ ” By the time Sam had finished talking, according to Riley, "I felt like I was the biggest star on Sun Records!” But that feeling didn't last, and Riley, like so many Sun artists before, decided he had a better chance at stardom elsewhere. He signed with Brunswick Records, and recorded a single with Owen Bradley, a follow-up to "Flying Saucers Rock & Roll" called "Rockin' on the Moon", which I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear had been an influence on Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, "Rockin' on the Moon"] But that wasn't a success either, and Riley came crawling back to Sun, though he never trusted Phillips again. He carried on as a Sun artist for a while, and then started recording for other labels based around Memphis, under a variety of different names. with a variety of different bands. For example he played harmonica on "Shimmy Shimmy Walk" by the Megatons, a great instrumental knock-off of "You Don't Love Me": [Excerpt: The Megatons, "Shimmy Shimmy Walk Part 1"] Indeed, he had a part to play in the development of another classic Memphis instrumental, though he didn't play on it. Riley was recording a session under one of his pseudonyms at the Stax studio, in 1962, and he was in the control room after the session when the other musicians started jamming on a twelve-bar blues: [Excerpt: Booker T and the MGs, "Green Onions"] But we'll talk more about Booker T and the MGs in a few months' time. After failing to make it as a rock and roll star, Billy Riley decided he might as well go with what he'd been most successful at, and become a full-time session musician. He moved to LA, where he was one of the large number of people who were occasional parts of the group of session players known as the Wrecking Crew. He played harmonica, for example, on the album version of the Beach Boys' "Help Me Ronda": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Help Me, Ronda"] And on Dean Martin's "Houston": [Excerpt: Dean Martin, "Houston"] After a couple of years of this, he went back to the south, and started recording again for anyone who would have him. But again, he was unlucky in sales -- and songs he recorded would tend to get recorded by other artists. For example, in 1971 he recorded a single produced by Chips Moman, the great Memphis country-soul producer and songwriter who had recently revitalised Elvis' career. That song, Tony Joe White's "I've Got a Thing About You Baby" started rising up the charts: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, "I've Got A Thing About You Baby"] But then Elvis released his own version of the song, and Riley's version stalled at number ninety-three. In 1973, Riley decided to retire from the music business, and go to work in the construction industry instead. He would eventually be dragged back onto the stage in 1979, and he toured Europe after that, playing to crowds of rockabilly fans In 1992, Bob Dylan came calling. It turned out that Bob Dylan was a massive Billy Lee Riley fan, and had spent six years trying to track Riley down, even going so far as to visit Riley's old home in Tennessee to see if he could find him. Eventually he did, and he got Riley to open for him on a few shows in Arkansas and Tennessee, and in Little Rock he got Riley to come out on stage and perform "Red Hot" with him and his band: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and Billy Lee Riley, "Red Hot"] In 2015, when Dylan was awarded the "Musicares person of the year" award, he spent most of his speech attacking anyone in the music industry who had ever said a bad word about Bob Dylan. It's one of the most extraordinarily, hilariously, petty bits of score-settling you'll ever hear, and I urge you to seek it out online if you ever start to worry that your own ego bruises too easily. But in that speech Dylan does say good things about some people.He talks for a long time about Riley, and I won't quote all of it, but I'll quote a short section: "He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don't stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry—a condescending term—as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who's got 20 or 30 hits behind him.” Dylan went on to talk about his long friendship with Riley, and to say that the reason he was proud to accept the Musicares award was that in his last years, Musicares had helped Billy Lee Riley pay his doctor's bills and keep comfortable, and that Dylan considered that a debt that couldn't be repaid. Billy Lee Riley gave his final performance in June 2009, on Beale Street in Memphis, using a walking frame for support. He died of colon cancer in August 2009, aged 75.

    Episode fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and at the flying saucer craze of the fifties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Silhouettes” by the Rays, and the power of subliminal messages. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. I’ve also relied on a lot of websites for this one, including this very brief outline of Riley’s life in his own words.   There are many compilations of Riley’s music. This one, from Bear Family, is probably the most comprehensive collection of his fifties work.  The Patreon episode on “The Flying Saucer”, for backers who’ve not heard it, is at https://www.patreon.com/posts/27855307 Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   ERRATUM I mistakenly said “Jack Earl” instead of Jack Earls at one point.   Transcript   Let’s talk about flying saucers for a minute. One aspect of 1950s culture that probably requires a little discussion at this point is the obsession in many quarters with the idea of alien invasion. Of course, there were the many, many, films on the subject that filled out the double bills and serials, things like “Flying Disc Man From Mars”, “Radar Men From The Moon”, “It Came From Outer Space”, “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers”, and so on. But those films, campy as they are, reveal a real fascination with the idea that was prevalent throughout US culture at the time. While the term “flying saucer” had been coined in 1930, it really took off in June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a Minnesotan pilot, saw nine disc-shaped objects in the air while he was flying. Arnold’s experience has entered into legend as the canonical “first flying saucer sighting”, mostly because Arnold seems to have been, before the incident, a relatively stable person — or at least someone who gave off all the signals that were taken as signs of stability in the 1940s. Arnold seems to have just been someone who saw something odd, and wanted to find out what it was that he’d seen. But eventually two different groups of people seem to have dominated the conversation — religious fanatics who saw in Arnold’s vision a confirmation of their own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible, and people who believed that the things Arnold had seen came from another planet. With no other explanations forthcoming, he turned to the people who held to the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being comparatively the saner option. Over the next few years, so did a significant proportion of the American population. The same month as Kenneth Arnold saw his saucers, a nuclear test monitoring balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. A farmer who found some of the debris had heard reports of Arnold’s sightings, and put two and two together and made space aliens. The Government didn’t want to admit that the balloon had been monitoring nuclear tests, and so various cover stories were put out, which in turn led to the belief in aliens becoming ever more widespread. And this tied in with the nuclear paranoia that was sweeping the nation. It was widely known, of course, that both the USA and Russia were working on space programmes — and that those space programmes were intimately tied in with the nuclear missiles they were also developing. While it was never stated specifically, it was common knowledge that the real reason for the competition between the two nations to build rockets was purely about weapons delivery, and that the civilian space programme was, in the eyes of both governments if not the people working on it, merely a way of scaring the other side with how good the rockets were, without going so far that they might accidentally instigate a nuclear conflict. When you realise this, Little Richard’s terror at the launch of Sputnik seems a little less irrational, and so does the idea that there might be aliens from outer space. So, why am I talking about flying saucers? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that, among other things, this podcast is a cultural history of the latter part of the twentieth century, and you can’t understand anything about the mid twentieth century without understanding the deeply weird paranoid ideas that would sweep the culture. The second is that it inspired a whole lot of records. One of those, “the Flying Saucer”, I’ve actually already looked at briefly in one of the Patreon bonus episodes, but is worth a mention here — it was a novelty record that was a very early example of sampling: [Excerpt: Buchanan and Goodman, “The Flying Saucer”] And there’d been “Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer” by Ella Fitzgerald: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer”] But today we’re going to look at one of the great rockabilly records, by someone who was one of the great unsung acts on Sun Records: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”] Billy Lee Riley was someone who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time — for example, when he got married after leaving the army, he decided to move with his new wife to Memphis, and open a restaurant. The problem was that neither of them knew Memphis particularly well, and didn’t know how bad the area they were opening it in was. The restaurant was eventually closed down by the authorities after only three months, after a gunfight between two of their customers. But there was one time when he was in precisely the right place at the right time. He was an unsuccessful, down on his luck, country singer in 1955, when he was driving on Christmas morning, from his in-laws’ house in Arkansas to his parents’ house three miles away, and he stopped to pick up two hitch-hikers. Those two hitch-hikers were Cowboy Jack Clement and Ronald “Slim” Wallace, two musicians who were planning on setting up their own record company. Riley was so interested in their conversation that while he’d started out just expecting to drive them the three miles he was going, he ended up driving them the more than seventy miles to Memphis. Clement and Wallace invited Riley to join their label. They actually had little idea of how to get into the record business — Clement was an ex-Marine and aspiring writer, who was also a dance instructor — he had no experience or knowledge of dancing when he became a dance instructor, but had decided that it couldn’t be that difficult. He also played pedal steel in a Western Swing band led by someone called Sleepy-Eyed John Epley. Wallace, meanwhile, was a truck driver who worked weekends as a bass player and bandleader, and Clement had joined Wallace’s band as well as Epley’s. They regularly commuted between Arkansas, where Wallace owned a club, and Memphis, where Clement was based, and on one of their journeys, Clement, who had been riding in the back seat, had casually suggested to Wallace that they should get into the record business. Wallace would provide the resources — they’d use his garage as a studio, and finance it with his truck-driving money — while Clement would do the work of actually converting the garage into a studio. But before they were finished, they’d been out drinking in Arkansas on Christmas Eve with Wallace’s wife and a friend, and Clement and the friend had been arrested for drunkenness. Wallace’s wife had driven back to Memphis to be home for Christmas day, while Wallace had stayed on to bail out Clement and hitch-hike back with him. They hadn’t actually built their studio yet, as such, but they were convinced it was going to be great when they did, and when Riley picked them up he told them what a great country singer he was, and they all agreed that when they did get the studio built they were going to have Riley be the first artist on their new label, Fernwood Records. In the meantime, Riley was going to be the singer in their band, because he needed the ten or twelve dollars a night he could get from them. So for a few months, Riley performed with Clement and Wallace in their band, and they slowly worked out an act that would show Riley’s talents off to their best advantage. By May, Clement still hadn’t actually built the studio — he’d bought a tape recorder and a mixing board from Sleepy-Eyed John Epley, but he hadn’t quite got round to making Wallace’s garage into a decent space for recording in. So Clement and Wallace pulled together a group of musicians, including a bass player, because Clement didn’t think Wallace was good enough, Johnny Bernero, the drummer who’d played on Elvis’ last Sun session, and a guitarist named Roland Janes, and rented some studio time from a local radio station. They recorded the two sides of what was intended to be the first single on Fernwood Records, “Rock With Me Baby”: [Excerpt: Billy Lee RIley, “Rock With Me Baby”] So they had a tape, but they needed to get it properly mastered to release it as a single. The best place in town to do that was at Memphis Recording Services, which Sam Phillips was still keeping going even though he was now having a lot of success with Sun. Phillips listened to the track while he was mastering it, and he liked it a lot. He liked it enough, in fact, that he made an offer to Clement — rather than Clement starting up his own label, would he sell the master to Phillips, and come and work for Sun records instead? He did, leaving Slim Wallace to run Fernwood on his own, and for the last few years that Sun was relevant, Cowboy Jack Clement was one of the most important people working for the label — second only to Sam Phillips himself. Clement would end up producing sessions by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. But his first session was to produce the B-side to the Billy Lee Riley record. Sam Phillips hadn’t liked their intended B-side, so they went back into the studio with the same set of musicians to record a “Heartbreak Hotel” knockoff called “Trouble Bound”: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “Trouble Bound”] That was much more to Sam’s liking, and the result was released as Billy Lee Riley’s first single. Riley and the musicians who had played on that initial record became the go-to people for Clement when he wanted musicians to back Sun’s stars. Roland Janes, in particular, is someone whose name you will see on the credits for all sorts of Sun records from mid-56 onwards. Riley, too, would play on sessions — usually on harmonica, but occasionally on guitar, bass, or piano. There’s one particularly memorable moment of Riley on guitar at the end of Jerry Lee Lewis’ first single, a cover version of Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms”. That song had been cut more as a joke than anything else, with Janes, who couldn’t play bass, on bass. Right at the end of the song, Riley picked up a guitar, and hit a single wrong chord, just after everyone else had finished playing, and while their sound was dying away: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Crazy Arms”] Sam Phillips loved that track, and released it as it was, with Riley’s guitar chord on it. Riley, meanwhile, started gigging regularly, with a band consisting of Janes on guitar, new drummer Jimmy Van Eaton, and, at first, Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, all of whom would play regularly on any Sun sessions that needed musicians. Now, we’re going to be talking about Jerry Lee Lewis in a couple of weeks, so I don’t want to talk too much about him here, but you’ll have noticed that we already talked about him quite a bit in the episode on “Matchbox”. Jerry Lee Lewis was one of those characters who turn up everywhere, and even before he was a star, he was making a huge impression on other people’s lives. So while this isn’t an episode about him, you will see his effect on Riley’s career. He’s just someone who insists on pushing into the story before it’s his turn. Jerry Lee was the piano player on Riley’s first session for Sun proper. The song on that session was brought in by Roland Janes, who had a friend, Ray Scott, who had written a rock and roll song about flying saucers. Riley loved the song, but Phillips thought it needed something more — it needed to sound like it came from outer space. They still didn’t have much in the way of effects at the Sun studios — just the reverb system Phillips had cobbled together — but Janes had a tremolo bar on his guitar. These were a relatively new invention — they’d only been introduced on the Fender Stratocaster a little over two years earlier, and they hadn’t seen a great deal of use on records yet. Phillips got Janes to play making maximum use of the tremolo arm, and also added a ton of reverb, and this was the result: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”] Greil Marcus later said of that track that it was “one of the weirdest of early rock ‘n’ roll records – and early rock ‘n’ roll records were weird!” — and he’s right. “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll” is a truly odd recording, even by the standards of Sun Records in 1957. When Phillips heard that back, he said “Man that’s it. You sound like a bunch of little green men from Mars!” — and then immediately realised that that should be the name of Riley’s backing band. So the single came out as by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and the musicians got themselves a set of matching green suits to wear at gigs, which they bought at Lansky’s on Beale Street. Those suits caused problems, though, as they were made of a material which soaked up sweat, which was a problem given how frantically active Riley’s stage show was — at one show at the Arkansas State University Riley jumped on top of the piano and started dancing — except the piano turned out to be on wheels, and rolled off the stage. Riley had to jump up and cling on to a steel girder at the top of the stage, dangling from it by one arm, while holding the mic in the other, and gesturing frantically for people to get him down. You can imagine that with a show like that, absorbent material would be a problem, and sometimes the musicians would lie on their backs to play solos and get the audiences excited, and then find it difficult to get themselves back to their feet again, because their suits were so heavy. Riley’s next single was a cover of a blues song first recorded by another Sun artist, Billy “the Kid” Emerson, in 1955. “Red Hot” had been based on a schoolyard chant: [Excerpt: Billy “the Kid” Emerson, “Red Hot”] While “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll” had been a local hit, but not a national one, Billy was confident that his version of “Red Hot” would be the record that would make him into a national star: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Red Hot”] The song was recorded either at the same session as “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll” or at one a couple of weeks later with a different pianist — accounts vary — but it was put on the shelf for six months, and in that six months Riley toured promoting “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”, and also carried on playing on sessions for Sun. He played bass on “Take Me To That Place” by Jack Earls: [Excerpt: Jack Earls, “Take Me To That Place”]  Rhythm guitar on “Miracle of You” by Hannah Fay: [Excerpt: Hannah Fay, “Miracle of You”] And much more. But he was still holding out hopes for the success of “Red Hot”, which Sam Phillips kept telling him was going to be his big hit. And for a while it looked like that might be the case. Dewey Phillips played the record constantly, and Alan Freed tipped it to be a big hit. But for some reason, while it was massive in Memphis, the track did nothing at all outside the area — the Memphis musician Jim Dickinson once said that he had never actually realised that “Red Hot” hadn’t been a hit until he moved to Texas and nobody there had heard it, because everyone in Memphis knew the song. Riley and his band continued recording for Sun, both recording for themselves and as backup musicians for other artists. For example Hayden Thompson’s version of Little Junior Parker’s “Love My Baby”, another rockabilly cover of an old Sun blues track, was released shortly after “Red Hot”, credited to Thompson “with Billy Lee Riley’s band [and] Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘pumping piano'”: [Excerpt: Hayden Thompson, “Love My Baby”]  But Riley was starting to get suspicious. “Red Hot” should have been a hit, it was obvious to him. So why hadn’t it been? Riley became convinced that what had happened was that Sam Phillips had decided that Riley and his band were more valuable to him as session musicians, backing Jerry Lee Lewis and whoever else came into the studio, than as stars themselves. He would later claim that he had actually seen piles of orders for “Red Hot” come in from record shops around the country, and Sam Phillips phoning the stores up and telling them he was sending them Jerry Lee Lewis records instead. He also remembered that Sam had told him to come off the road from a package tour to record an album — and had sent Jerry Lee out on the tour in his place. He became convinced that Sam Phillips was deliberately trying to sabotage his career. He got drunk, and he got mad. He went to Sun studios, where Sam Phillips’ latest girlfriend, Sally, was working, and started screaming at her, and kicked a hole in a double bass. Sally, terrified, called Sam, who told her to lock the doors, and to on no account let Riley leave the building. Sam came to the studio and talked Riley down, explaining to him calmly that there was no way he would sabotage a record on his own label — that just wouldn’t make any sense. He said ““Red Hot” ain’t got it. We’re saving you for something good.’ ” By the time Sam had finished talking, according to Riley, “I felt like I was the biggest star on Sun Records!” But that feeling didn’t last, and Riley, like so many Sun artists before, decided he had a better chance at stardom elsewhere. He signed with Brunswick Records, and recorded a single with Owen Bradley, a follow-up to “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll” called “Rockin’ on the Moon”, which I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear had been an influence on Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “Rockin’ on the Moon”] But that wasn’t a success either, and Riley came crawling back to Sun, though he never trusted Phillips again. He carried on as a Sun artist for a while, and then started recording for other labels based around Memphis, under a variety of different names. with a variety of different bands. For example he played harmonica on “Shimmy Shimmy Walk” by the Megatons, a great instrumental knock-off of “You Don’t Love Me”: [Excerpt: The Megatons, “Shimmy Shimmy Walk Part 1”] Indeed, he had a part to play in the development of another classic Memphis instrumental, though he didn’t play on it. Riley was recording a session under one of his pseudonyms at the Stax studio, in 1962, and he was in the control room after the session when the other musicians started jamming on a twelve-bar blues: [Excerpt: Booker T and the MGs, “Green Onions”] But we’ll talk more about Booker T and the MGs in a few months’ time. After failing to make it as a rock and roll star, Billy Riley decided he might as well go with what he’d been most successful at, and become a full-time session musician. He moved to LA, where he was one of the large number of people who were occasional parts of the group of session players known as the Wrecking Crew. He played harmonica, for example, on the album version of the Beach Boys’ “Help Me Ronda”: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Help Me, Ronda”] And on Dean Martin’s “Houston”: [Excerpt: Dean Martin, “Houston”] After a couple of years of this, he went back to the south, and started recording again for anyone who would have him. But again, he was unlucky in sales — and songs he recorded would tend to get recorded by other artists. For example, in 1971 he recorded a single produced by Chips Moman, the great Memphis country-soul producer and songwriter who had recently revitalised Elvis’ career. That song, Tony Joe White’s “I’ve Got a Thing About You Baby” started rising up the charts: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “I’ve Got A Thing About You Baby”] But then Elvis released his own version of the song, and Riley’s version stalled at number ninety-three. In 1973, Riley decided to retire from the music business, and go to work in the construction industry instead. He would eventually be dragged back onto the stage in 1979, and he toured Europe after that, playing to crowds of rockabilly fans In 1992, Bob Dylan came calling. It turned out that Bob Dylan was a massive Billy Lee Riley fan, and had spent six years trying to track Riley down, even going so far as to visit Riley’s old home in Tennessee to see if he could find him. Eventually he did, and he got Riley to open for him on a few shows in Arkansas and Tennessee, and in Little Rock he got Riley to come out on stage and perform “Red Hot” with him and his band: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and Billy Lee Riley, “Red Hot”] In 2015, when Dylan was awarded the “Musicares person of the year” award, he spent most of his speech attacking anyone in the music industry who had ever said a bad word about Bob Dylan. It’s one of the most extraordinarily, hilariously, petty bits of score-settling you’ll ever hear, and I urge you to seek it out online if you ever start to worry that your own ego bruises too easily. But in that speech Dylan does say good things about some people.He talks for a long time about Riley, and I won’t quote all of it, but I’ll quote a short section: “He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don’t stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry—a condescending term—as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who’s got 20 or 30 hits behind him.” Dylan went on to talk about his long friendship with Riley, and to say that the reason he was proud to accept the Musicares award was that in his last years, Musicares had helped Billy Lee Riley pay his doctor’s bills and keep comfortable, and that Dylan considered that a debt that couldn’t be repaid. Billy Lee Riley gave his final performance in June 2009, on Beale Street in Memphis, using a walking frame for support. He died of colon cancer in August 2009, aged 75.

    Episode fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and at the flying saucer craze of the fifties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Silhouettes” by the Rays, and the power of subliminal messages. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. I’ve also relied on a lot of websites for this one, including this very brief outline of Riley’s life in his own words.   There are many compilations of Riley’s music. This one, from Bear Family, is probably the most comprehensive collection of his fifties work.  The Patreon episode on “The Flying Saucer”, for backers who’ve not heard it, is at https://www.patreon.com/posts/27855307 Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   ERRATUM I mistakenly said “Jack Earl” instead of Jack Earls at one point.   Transcript   Let’s talk about flying saucers for a minute. One aspect of 1950s culture that probably requires a little discussion at this point is the obsession in many quarters with the idea of alien invasion. Of course, there were the many, many, films on the subject that filled out the double bills and serials, things like “Flying Disc Man From Mars”, “Radar Men From The Moon”, “It Came From Outer Space”, “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers”, and so on. But those films, campy as they are, reveal a real fascination with the idea that was prevalent throughout US culture at the time. While the term “flying saucer” had been coined in 1930, it really took off in June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a Minnesotan pilot, saw nine disc-shaped objects in the air while he was flying. Arnold’s experience has entered into legend as the canonical “first flying saucer sighting”, mostly because Arnold seems to have been, before the incident, a relatively stable person — or at least someone who gave off all the signals that were taken as signs of stability in the 1940s. Arnold seems to have just been someone who saw something odd, and wanted to find out what it was that he’d seen. But eventually two different groups of people seem to have dominated the conversation — religious fanatics who saw in Arnold’s vision a confirmation of their own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible, and people who believed that the things Arnold had seen came from another planet. With no other explanations forthcoming, he turned to the people who held to the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being comparatively the saner option. Over the next few years, so did a significant proportion of the American population. The same month as Kenneth Arnold saw his saucers, a nuclear test monitoring balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. A farmer who found some of the debris had heard reports of Arnold’s sightings, and put two and two together and made space aliens. The Government didn’t want to admit that the balloon had been monitoring nuclear tests, and so various cover stories were put out, which in turn led to the belief in aliens becoming ever more widespread. And this tied in with the nuclear paranoia that was sweeping the nation. It was widely known, of course, that both the USA and Russia were working on space programmes — and that those space programmes were intimately tied in with the nuclear missiles they were also developing. While it was never stated specifically, it was common knowledge that the real reason for the competition between the two nations to build rockets was purely about weapons delivery, and that the civilian space programme was, in the eyes of both governments if not the people working on it, merely a way of scaring the other side with how good the rockets were, without going so far that they might accidentally instigate a nuclear conflict. When you realise this, Little Richard’s terror at the launch of Sputnik seems a little less irrational, and so does the idea that there might be aliens from outer space. So, why am I talking about flying saucers? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that, among other things, this podcast is a cultural history of the latter part of the twentieth century, and you can’t understand anything about the mid twentieth century without understanding the deeply weird paranoid ideas that would sweep the culture. The second is that it inspired a whole lot of records. One of those, “the Flying Saucer”, I’ve actually already looked at briefly in one of the Patreon bonus episodes, but is worth a mention here — it was a novelty record that was a very early example of sampling: [Excerpt: Buchanan and Goodman, “The Flying Saucer”] And there’d been “Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer” by Ella Fitzgerald: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer”] But today we’re going to look at one of the great rockabilly records, by someone who was one of the great unsung acts on Sun Records: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”] Billy Lee Riley was someone who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time — for example, when he got married after leaving the army, he decided to move with his new wife to Memphis, and open a restaurant. The problem was that neither of them knew Memphis particularly well, and didn’t know how bad the area they were opening it in was. The restaurant was eventually closed down by the authorities after only three months, after a gunfight between two of their customers. But there was one time when he was in precisely the right place at the right time. He was an unsuccessful, down on his luck, country singer in 1955, when he was driving on Christmas morning, from his in-laws’ house in Arkansas to his parents’ house three miles away, and he stopped to pick up two hitch-hikers. Those two hitch-hikers were Cowboy Jack Clement and Ronald “Slim” Wallace, two musicians who were planning on setting up their own record company. Riley was so interested in their conversation that while he’d started out just expecting to drive them the three miles he was going, he ended up driving them the more than seventy miles to Memphis. Clement and Wallace invited Riley to join their label. They actually had little idea of how to get into the record business — Clement was an ex-Marine and aspiring writer, who was also a dance instructor — he had no experience or knowledge of dancing when he became a dance instructor, but had decided that it couldn’t be that difficult. He also played pedal steel in a Western Swing band led by someone called Sleepy-Eyed John Epley. Wallace, meanwhile, was a truck driver who worked weekends as a bass player and bandleader, and Clement had joined Wallace’s band as well as Epley’s. They regularly commuted between Arkansas, where Wallace owned a club, and Memphis, where Clement was based, and on one of their journeys, Clement, who had been riding in the back seat, had casually suggested to Wallace that they should get into the record business. Wallace would provide the resources — they’d use his garage as a studio, and finance it with his truck-driving money — while Clement would do the work of actually converting the garage into a studio. But before they were finished, they’d been out drinking in Arkansas on Christmas Eve with Wallace’s wife and a friend, and Clement and the friend had been arrested for drunkenness. Wallace’s wife had driven back to Memphis to be home for Christmas day, while Wallace had stayed on to bail out Clement and hitch-hike back with him. They hadn’t actually built their studio yet, as such, but they were convinced it was going to be great when they did, and when Riley picked them up he told them what a great country singer he was, and they all agreed that when they did get the studio built they were going to have Riley be the first artist on their new label, Fernwood Records. In the meantime, Riley was going to be the singer in their band, because he needed the ten or twelve dollars a night he could get from them. So for a few months, Riley performed with Clement and Wallace in their band, and they slowly worked out an act that would show Riley’s talents off to their best advantage. By May, Clement still hadn’t actually built the studio — he’d bought a tape recorder and a mixing board from Sleepy-Eyed John Epley, but he hadn’t quite got round to making Wallace’s garage into a decent space for recording in. So Clement and Wallace pulled together a group of musicians, including a bass player, because Clement didn’t think Wallace was good enough, Johnny Bernero, the drummer who’d played on Elvis’ last Sun session, and a guitarist named Roland Janes, and rented some studio time from a local radio station. They recorded the two sides of what was intended to be the first single on Fernwood Records, “Rock With Me Baby”: [Excerpt: Billy Lee RIley, “Rock With Me Baby”] So they had a tape, but they needed to get it properly mastered to release it as a single. The best place in town to do that was at Memphis Recording Services, which Sam Phillips was still keeping going even though he was now having a lot of success with Sun. Phillips listened to the track while he was mastering it, and he liked it a lot. He liked it enough, in fact, that he made an offer to Clement — rather than Clement starting up his own label, would he sell the master to Phillips, and come and work for Sun records instead? He did, leaving Slim Wallace to run Fernwood on his own, and for the last few years that Sun was relevant, Cowboy Jack Clement was one of the most important people working for the label — second only to Sam Phillips himself. Clement would end up producing sessions by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. But his first session was to produce the B-side to the Billy Lee Riley record. Sam Phillips hadn’t liked their intended B-side, so they went back into the studio with the same set of musicians to record a “Heartbreak Hotel” knockoff called “Trouble Bound”: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “Trouble Bound”] That was much more to Sam’s liking, and the result was released as Billy Lee Riley’s first single. Riley and the musicians who had played on that initial record became the go-to people for Clement when he wanted musicians to back Sun’s stars. Roland Janes, in particular, is someone whose name you will see on the credits for all sorts of Sun records from mid-56 onwards. Riley, too, would play on sessions — usually on harmonica, but occasionally on guitar, bass, or piano. There’s one particularly memorable moment of Riley on guitar at the end of Jerry Lee Lewis’ first single, a cover version of Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms”. That song had been cut more as a joke than anything else, with Janes, who couldn’t play bass, on bass. Right at the end of the song, Riley picked up a guitar, and hit a single wrong chord, just after everyone else had finished playing, and while their sound was dying away: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Crazy Arms”] Sam Phillips loved that track, and released it as it was, with Riley’s guitar chord on it. Riley, meanwhile, started gigging regularly, with a band consisting of Janes on guitar, new drummer Jimmy Van Eaton, and, at first, Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, all of whom would play regularly on any Sun sessions that needed musicians. Now, we’re going to be talking about Jerry Lee Lewis in a couple of weeks, so I don’t want to talk too much about him here, but you’ll have noticed that we already talked about him quite a bit in the episode on “Matchbox”. Jerry Lee Lewis was one of those characters who turn up everywhere, and even before he was a star, he was making a huge impression on other people’s lives. So while this isn’t an episode about him, you will see his effect on Riley’s career. He’s just someone who insists on pushing into the story before it’s his turn. Jerry Lee was the piano player on Riley’s first session for Sun proper. The song on that session was brought in by Roland Janes, who had a friend, Ray Scott, who had written a rock and roll song about flying saucers. Riley loved the song, but Phillips thought it needed something more — it needed to sound like it came from outer space. They still didn’t have much in the way of effects at the Sun studios — just the reverb system Phillips had cobbled together — but Janes had a tremolo bar on his guitar. These were a relatively new invention — they’d only been introduced on the Fender Stratocaster a little over two years earlier, and they hadn’t seen a great deal of use on records yet. Phillips got Janes to play making maximum use of the tremolo arm, and also added a ton of reverb, and this was the result: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”] Greil Marcus later said of that track that it was “one of the weirdest of early rock ‘n’ roll records – and early rock ‘n’ roll records were weird!” — and he’s right. “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll” is a truly odd recording, even by the standards of Sun Records in 1957. When Phillips heard that back, he said “Man that’s it. You sound like a bunch of little green men from Mars!” — and then immediately realised that that should be the name of Riley’s backing band. So the single came out as by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and the musicians got themselves a set of matching green suits to wear at gigs, which they bought at Lansky’s on Beale Street. Those suits caused problems, though, as they were made of a material which soaked up sweat, which was a problem given how frantically active Riley’s stage show was — at one show at the Arkansas State University Riley jumped on top of the piano and started dancing — except the piano turned out to be on wheels, and rolled off the stage. Riley had to jump up and cling on to a steel girder at the top of the stage, dangling from it by one arm, while holding the mic in the other, and gesturing frantically for people to get him down. You can imagine that with a show like that, absorbent material would be a problem, and sometimes the musicians would lie on their backs to play solos and get the audiences excited, and then find it difficult to get themselves back to their feet again, because their suits were so heavy. Riley’s next single was a cover of a blues song first recorded by another Sun artist, Billy “the Kid” Emerson, in 1955. “Red Hot” had been based on a schoolyard chant: [Excerpt: Billy “the Kid” Emerson, “Red Hot”] While “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll” had been a local hit, but not a national one, Billy was confident that his version of “Red Hot” would be the record that would make him into a national star: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Red Hot”] The song was recorded either at the same session as “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll” or at one a couple of weeks later with a different pianist — accounts vary — but it was put on the shelf for six months, and in that six months Riley toured promoting “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”, and also carried on playing on sessions for Sun. He played bass on “Take Me To That Place” by Jack Earls: [Excerpt: Jack Earls, “Take Me To That Place”]  Rhythm guitar on “Miracle of You” by Hannah Fay: [Excerpt: Hannah Fay, “Miracle of You”] And much more. But he was still holding out hopes for the success of “Red Hot”, which Sam Phillips kept telling him was going to be his big hit. And for a while it looked like that might be the case. Dewey Phillips played the record constantly, and Alan Freed tipped it to be a big hit. But for some reason, while it was massive in Memphis, the track did nothing at all outside the area — the Memphis musician Jim Dickinson once said that he had never actually realised that “Red Hot” hadn’t been a hit until he moved to Texas and nobody there had heard it, because everyone in Memphis knew the song. Riley and his band continued recording for Sun, both recording for themselves and as backup musicians for other artists. For example Hayden Thompson’s version of Little Junior Parker’s “Love My Baby”, another rockabilly cover of an old Sun blues track, was released shortly after “Red Hot”, credited to Thompson “with Billy Lee Riley’s band [and] Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘pumping piano'”: [Excerpt: Hayden Thompson, “Love My Baby”]  But Riley was starting to get suspicious. “Red Hot” should have been a hit, it was obvious to him. So why hadn’t it been? Riley became convinced that what had happened was that Sam Phillips had decided that Riley and his band were more valuable to him as session musicians, backing Jerry Lee Lewis and whoever else came into the studio, than as stars themselves. He would later claim that he had actually seen piles of orders for “Red Hot” come in from record shops around the country, and Sam Phillips phoning the stores up and telling them he was sending them Jerry Lee Lewis records instead. He also remembered that Sam had told him to come off the road from a package tour to record an album — and had sent Jerry Lee out on the tour in his place. He became convinced that Sam Phillips was deliberately trying to sabotage his career. He got drunk, and he got mad. He went to Sun studios, where Sam Phillips’ latest girlfriend, Sally, was working, and started screaming at her, and kicked a hole in a double bass. Sally, terrified, called Sam, who told her to lock the doors, and to on no account let Riley leave the building. Sam came to the studio and talked Riley down, explaining to him calmly that there was no way he would sabotage a record on his own label — that just wouldn’t make any sense. He said ““Red Hot” ain’t got it. We’re saving you for something good.’ ” By the time Sam had finished talking, according to Riley, “I felt like I was the biggest star on Sun Records!” But that feeling didn’t last, and Riley, like so many Sun artists before, decided he had a better chance at stardom elsewhere. He signed with Brunswick Records, and recorded a single with Owen Bradley, a follow-up to “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll” called “Rockin’ on the Moon”, which I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear had been an influence on Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “Rockin’ on the Moon”] But that wasn’t a success either, and Riley came crawling back to Sun, though he never trusted Phillips again. He carried on as a Sun artist for a while, and then started recording for other labels based around Memphis, under a variety of different names. with a variety of different bands. For example he played harmonica on “Shimmy Shimmy Walk” by the Megatons, a great instrumental knock-off of “You Don’t Love Me”: [Excerpt: The Megatons, “Shimmy Shimmy Walk Part 1”] Indeed, he had a part to play in the development of another classic Memphis instrumental, though he didn’t play on it. Riley was recording a session under one of his pseudonyms at the Stax studio, in 1962, and he was in the control room after the session when the other musicians started jamming on a twelve-bar blues: [Excerpt: Booker T and the MGs, “Green Onions”] But we’ll talk more about Booker T and the MGs in a few months’ time. After failing to make it as a rock and roll star, Billy Riley decided he might as well go with what he’d been most successful at, and become a full-time session musician. He moved to LA, where he was one of the large number of people who were occasional parts of the group of session players known as the Wrecking Crew. He played harmonica, for example, on the album version of the Beach Boys’ “Help Me Ronda”: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Help Me, Ronda”] And on Dean Martin’s “Houston”: [Excerpt: Dean Martin, “Houston”] After a couple of years of this, he went back to the south, and started recording again for anyone who would have him. But again, he was unlucky in sales — and songs he recorded would tend to get recorded by other artists. For example, in 1971 he recorded a single produced by Chips Moman, the great Memphis country-soul producer and songwriter who had recently revitalised Elvis’ career. That song, Tony Joe White’s “I’ve Got a Thing About You Baby” started rising up the charts: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “I’ve Got A Thing About You Baby”] But then Elvis released his own version of the song, and Riley’s version stalled at number ninety-three. In 1973, Riley decided to retire from the music business, and go to work in the construction industry instead. He would eventually be dragged back onto the stage in 1979, and he toured Europe after that, playing to crowds of rockabilly fans In 1992, Bob Dylan came calling. It turned out that Bob Dylan was a massive Billy Lee Riley fan, and had spent six years trying to track Riley down, even going so far as to visit Riley’s old home in Tennessee to see if he could find him. Eventually he did, and he got Riley to open for him on a few shows in Arkansas and Tennessee, and in Little Rock he got Riley to come out on stage and perform “Red Hot” with him and his band: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and Billy Lee Riley, “Red Hot”] In 2015, when Dylan was awarded the “Musicares person of the year” award, he spent most of his speech attacking anyone in the music industry who had ever said a bad word about Bob Dylan. It’s one of the most extraordinarily, hilariously, petty bits of score-settling you’ll ever hear, and I urge you to seek it out online if you ever start to worry that your own ego bruises too easily. But in that speech Dylan does say good things about some people.He talks for a long time about Riley, and I won’t quote all of it, but I’ll quote a short section: “He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don’t stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry—a condescending term—as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who’s got 20 or 30 hits behind him.” Dylan went on to talk about his long friendship with Riley, and to say that the reason he was proud to accept the Musicares award was that in his last years, Musicares had helped Billy Lee Riley pay his doctor’s bills and keep comfortable, and that Dylan considered that a debt that couldn’t be repaid. Billy Lee Riley gave his final performance in June 2009, on Beale Street in Memphis, using a walking frame for support. He died of colon cancer in August 2009, aged 75.

(1) Dans introduction to nuclear nonproliferation through as an undergraduate and in his early career in the Department of Energy (2) Leveraging market forces in the nuclear energy industry to address national security issues through the Megatons to Megawatts program (3) Dan's upcoming work on developing centrifuges for the production of high assay low enriched uranium

Episode 81 - "This Is Not a Place of Honor" It has threatened to start wars and it has (arguably) finished them; its effects and influences can be found throughout our world today; it has nearly limitless power for creation and destruction; and according to some people it may be our only hope. This week (and the last one too) we are digging deep into the controversial world of nuclear power generation. Over the course of two episodes we'll explore the basics of this technology (which is coincidentally where most other podcasts and videos seem to stop) and go from there to really truly explore the pros and the cons - including plenty that you've probably never considered. Is this technology our best hope for a carbon free future? Or is it another example of too many promises and technological optimism clouding out the realities of our situation?All this and more in a special two part series on everything nuclear power. Chapters 12:16 Unexamined Costs 17:25 Megatons to Megawatts 24:16 Thoughts from former chairman of US NRC 30:01 Construction costs 34:24 Waste 36:24 Church Rock 41:17 Waste disposal plans 44:45 Uranium-235 reserves 46:14 How do you communicate with the future? 56:47 What choice do we have? A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.CC BY-SA 4.0

In this episode we discuss... Susan Eisenhower on growing up as the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower The origins of her fascination with US-Soviet relations How her career began in corporate strategic marketing and took her to arms control and nuclear energy The Megatons to Megawatts Program The benefits of a cross-disciplinary approach to problem-solving How nuclear energy makes the world not just cleaner, but safer Why policymakers need a better strategy for international relations, for nuclear energy, and for climate change What it will take to make headway on climate change

It’s another bad episode and we’re starting to get a lil worried. In the meantime we focus on how Jerry orders a hit on the guy he mind wiped for trying to sell the exercise routine the guy made. Alex also still hates Britney. We also talk about: Twin Peaks, Spider-Man, Daphne & Velma, Destiny 2, Unique Imports, Cane Sword, Ghost Pepper Coffee, YMC Duck, Bed Sounds, Tape Recording The TV, Crotch Height Camera, Crawling Chase, Sam And Britney Love Mind Control, 8 Hour Episode, California Sharks, 5 Megatons of Explosives, Toy Commercials, The VAs Suck, Was Totally Spies Ever Good?

Let me ask you all a question. How much weapons-grade nuclear material do you think it would take to level a city the size of San Francisco? How many of you think it would be an amount about the size of this suitcase? OK. And how about this minibus?0:33All right. Well actually, under the right circumstances, an amount of highly enriched uranium about the size of your morning latte would be enough to kill 100,000 people instantly. Hundreds of thousands of others would become horribly ill, and parts of the city would be uninhabitable for years, if not for decades.0:56But you can forget that nuclear latte, because today&`&s nuclear weapons are hundreds of times more powerful even than those we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And even a limited nuclear war involving, say, tens of nuclear weapons, could lead to the end of all life on the planet.1:20So it&`&s really important that you know that right now we have over 15,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of nine nations. And if you live in a city or near a military facility, one is likely pointed right at you. In fact, if you live in any of the rural areas where nuclear weapons are stored globally, one is likely pointed at you.About 1,800 of these weapons are on high alert, which means they can be launched within 15 minutes of a presidential command.1:59So I know this is a bummer of an issue, and maybe you have that -- what was it? -- psychic fatigue that we heard about a little bit earlier. So I&`&m going to switch gears for just a second, and I&`&m going to talk about my imaginary friend, who I like to think of as Jasmine, just for a moment.2:16Jasmine, at the age of 25, is part of a generation that is more politically and socially engaged than anything we&`&ve seen in 50 years. She and her friends think of themselves as change agents and leaders and activists. I think of them as Generation Possible. They regularly protest about the issues they care about, but nuclear weapons are not one of them, which makes sense, because Jasmine was born in 1991, at the end of the Cold War. So she didn&`&t grow up hearing a lot about nuclear weapons. She never had to duck and cover under her desk at school. For Jasmine, a fallout shelter is an app in the Android store. Nuclear weapons help win games. And that is really a shame, because right now, we need Generation Possible to help us make some really important decisions about nuclear weapons.3:10For instance, will we further reduce our nuclear arsenals globally, or will we spend billions, maybe a trillion dollars, to modernize them so they last throughout the 21st century, so that by the time Jasmine is my age, she&`&s talking to her children and maybe even her grandchildren about the threat of nuclear holocaust? And if you&`&re paying any attention at all to cyberthreats, or, for instance, if you&`&ve read about the Stuxnet virus or, for God&`&s sake, if you&`&ve ever had an email account or a Yahoo account or a phone hacked, you can imagine the whole new world of hurt that could be triggered by modernization in a period of cyberwarfare.3:54Now, if you&`&re paying attention to the money, a trillion dollars could go a long way to feeding and educating and employing people, all of which could reduce the threat of nuclear war to begin with. So --4:08(Applause)4:11This is really crucial right now, because nuclear weapons -- they&`&re vulnerable. We have solid evidencethat terrorists are trying to get ahold of them. Just this last spring, when four retirees and two taxi drivers were arrested in the Republic of Georgia for trying to sell nuclear materials for 200 million dollars, they demonstrated that the black market for this stuff is alive and well. And it&`&s really important, because there have been dozens of accidents involving nuclear weapons, and I bet most of us have never heard anything about them.4:48Just here in the United States, we&`&ve dropped nuclear weapons on the Carolinas twice. In one case, one of the bombs, which fell out of an Air Force plane, didn&`&t detonate because the nuclear core was stored somewhere else on the plane. In another case, the weapon did arm when it hit the ground, and five of the switches designed to keep it from detonating failed. Luckily, the sixth one didn&`&t. But if that&`&s not enough to get your attention, there was the 1995 Black Brant incident. That&`&s when Russian radar technicians saw what they thought was a US nuclear missile streaking towards Russian airspace. It later turned out to be a Norwegian rocket collecting data about the northern lights. But at that time, Russian President Boris Yeltsin came within five minutes of launching a full-scale retaliatory nuclear attack against the United States.5:47So, most of the world&`&s nuclear nations have committed to getting rid of these weapons of mass destruction. But consider this: the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which is the most widely adopted arms control treaty in history with 190 signatories, sets no specific date by which the world&`&s nuclear-armed nations will get rid of their nuclear weapons.6:16Now, when John F. Kennedy sent a man to the moon and decided to bring him back, or decided to do both those things, he didn&`&t say, "Hey, whenever you guys get to it." He gave us a deadline. He gave us a challenge that would have been incredible just a few years earlier. And with that challenge, he inspired scientists and marketers, astronauts and schoolteachers. He gave us a vision. But along with that vision,he also tried to give us -- and most people don&`&t know this, either -- he tried to give us a partner in the form of our fiercest Cold War rival, the Soviet Union. Because part of Kennedy&`&s vision for the Apollo program was that it be a cooperation, not a competition, with the Soviets. And apparently, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, agreed. But before that cooperation could be realized, Kennedy was assassinated, and that part of the vision was deferred.7:15But the promise of joint innovation between these two nuclear superpowers wasn&`&t totally extinguished.Because in 1991, which is the year that Jasmine was born and the Soviet Union fell, these two nations engaged in a project that genuinely does seem incredible today in the truest sense of that word, which is that the US sent cash to the Russians when they needed it most, to secure loose nuclear materials and to employ out-of-work nuclear scientists. They worked alongside American scientists to convert weapons-grade uranium into the type of fuel that can be used for nuclear power instead. They called it, "Megatons to Megawatts." So the result is that for over 20 years, our two nations had a program that meant that one in 10 lightbulbs in the United States was essentially fueled by former Russian warheads.8:18So, together these two nations did something truly audacious. But the good news is, the global community has the chance to do something just as audacious today. To get rid of nuclear weapons and to end the supply of the materials required to produce them, some experts tell me would take 30 years. It would take a renaissance of sorts, the kinds of innovation that, for better or worse, underpinned both the Manhattan Project, which gave rise to nuclear weapons, and the Megatons to Megawatts program. It would take design constraints. These are fundamental to creativity, things like a platform for international collaboration; a date certain, which is a forcing mechanism; and a positive vision that inspires action. It would take us to 2045.9:15Now, 2045 happens to be the 100th anniversary of the birth of nuclear weapons in the New Mexico desert. But it&`&s also an important date for another reason. It&`&s predicted to be the advent of the singularity, a new moment in human development, where the lines between artificial intelligence and human intelligence blur, where computing and consciousness become almost indistinguishable and advanced technologies help us solve the 21st century&`&s greatest problems: hunger, energy, poverty,ushering in an era of abundance. And we all get to go to space on our way to becoming a multi-planetary species.10:03Now, the people who really believe this vision are the first to say they don&`&t yet know precisely how we&`&re going to get there. But the values behind their vision and the willingness to ask "How might we?" have inspired a generation of innovators. They&`&re working backward from the outcomes they want, using the creative problem-solving methods of collaborative design. They&`&re busting through obstacles. They&`&re redefining what we all consider possible.10:34But here&`&s the thing: that vision of abundance isn&`&t compatible with a world that still relies on a 20th-century nuclear doctrine called "mutually assured destruction." It has to be about building the foundations for the 22nd century. It has to be about strategies for mutually assured prosperity or, at the very least, mutually assured survival.11:08Now, every day, I get to meet people who are real pioneers in the field of nuclear threats. As you can see, many of them are young women, and they&`&re doing fiercely interesting stuff, like Mareena Robinson Snowden here, who is developing new ways, better ways, to detect nuclear warheads, which will help us overcome a critical hurdle to international disarmament. Or Melissa Hanham, who is using satellite imaging to make sense of what&`&s going on around far-flung nuclear sites. Or we have Beatrice Fihn in Europe, who has been campaigning to make nuclear weapons illegal in international courts of law, and just won a big victory at the UN last week.11:52(Applause)11:55And yet, and yet, with all of our talk in this culture about moon shots, too few members of Generation Possible and those of us who mentor them are taking on nuclear weapons. It&`&s as if there&`&s a taboo. But I remember something Kennedy said that has really stuck with me, and that is something to the effect that humans can be as big as the solutions to all the problems we&`&ve created. No problem of human destiny, he said, is beyond human beings. I believe that. And I bet a lot of you here believe that, too. And I know Generation Possible believes it.12:39So it&`&s time to commit to a date. Let&`&s end the nuclear weapons chapter on the 100th anniversary of its inception. After all, by 2045, we will have held billions of people hostage to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Surely, 100 years will have been enough. Surely, a century of economic development and the development of military strategy will have given us better ways to manage global conflict. Surely, if ever there was a global moon shot worth supporting, this is it.13:20Now, in the face of real threats -- for instance, North Korea&`&s recent nuclear weapons tests, which fly in the face of sanctions -- reasonable people disagree about whether we should maintain some number of nuclear weapons to deter aggression. But the question is: What&`&s the magic number? Is it a thousand? Is it a hundred? Ten? And then we have to ask: Who should be responsible for them? I think we can agree, however, that having 15,000 of them represents a greater global threat to Jasmine&`&s generation than a promise.14:00So it&`&s time we make a promise of a world in which we&`&ve broken the stranglehold that nuclear weapons have on our imaginations; in which we invest in the creative solutions that come from working backward from the future we desperately want, rather than plodding forward from a present that brings all of the mental models and biases of the past with it. It&`&s time we pledge our resources as leaders across the spectrum to work on this old problem in new ways, to ask, "How might we?" How might we make good on a promise of greater security for Jasmine&`&s generation in a world beyond nuclear weapons? I truly hope you will join us.14:48Thank you.14:49(Applause)14:53Thank you.14:54(App

Hour 1: KARI BAXTER DONOVAN in the face of Hurricane Florence!Hour 2: Megatons of HAPPY STORIES, and politics!

1) ‘Start Running’ – The Comet is Coming 2) ‘Hallelujah’ – Logic 3) ‘30000 Megatons’ – Pond 4) ‘Tales of Independence’ – Siena Root 5) ‘Love Path Again’ – Calcutá […] O conteúdo Já Ouvi Falar #4 – Maio 2017 aparece primeiro em Engenharia Rádio.

Hope all of you in the States enjoyed your Thanksgiving. We took some time off to enjoy ours, so this week, we’re giving you old gold. Øystein was recently in Houston, and because our stars didn’t align, we weren’t able to record a new episode with him. (Øystein, come back anytime, buddy!) To make up for that, we give you this rerun.  Learn 100% more about the tuba in this episode than you’ve ever known! Norwegian tuba soloist and chamber musician Øystein Baadsvik is the only tuba virtuoso in the world to make a career exclusively as a soloist. He is also the only tuba player in the world to have a great story about touring with a punk band. He joins us all the way from Norway to tell us about this shadowy instrument: its size, its repertoire, and its fnugg. Audio production by Todd “Tall Texan” Hulslander with slings and arrows by Dacia Clay. Music in this episode: Bass Tuba Concerto in F Minor, 1st movement, by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Performed by Øystein Baadsvik. Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra 1st movement, by John Williams. Performed by Øystein Baadsvik. “Fnugg” from The Front Row – Reserved (a Houston Public Media compilation CD). Performed by Øystein Baadsvik. “Fnugg” from YouTube video Blood Sweat and Tears tuba solo The Cod Lovers Encounters II for solo tuba, performed by Roger Bobo “Csárdás by Vittorio Monti,” performed by Øystein Baadsvik. “Ordner seg (It’ll Be All Right)” from Ferry Tales by Øystein Baadsvik. “Winter” from the Four Seasons Concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, performed by Øystein Baadsvik. PS, The title for this show was inspired by a great band called 500 Megatons of Boogie. You can find out more about them here: www.reverbnation.com/500megatonsofboogie For more about Øystein Baadsvik: www.baadsvik.com.

Nayan, Dan and Ben sit back down to discuss...well, the after effects of their last podcast. Dan waxes nostalgic about Tokyo Indie Fest and D4, Nayan absolutely goes fanboy nuts about Bloodstained and Ben sticks true to his word and speaks less than the last cast. Well, somewhat less. Bonus interview with Michiru Yamane, the lead composer for Bloodstained and much more.

Nayan, Dan and Ben sit back down to discuss...well, the after effects of their last podcast. Dan waxes nostalgic about Tokyo Indie Fest and D4, Nayan absolutely goes fanboy nuts about Bloodstained and Ben sticks true to his word and speaks less than the last cast. Well, somewhat less. Bonus interview with Michiru Yamane, the lead composer for Bloodstained and much more.

The Nintendo Week crew has an all-news show this week thanks to a few huge annoucnements. Join Alex, Ben, and Colin as they talk about Shovel Knight's Nintendo partnership, Nintendo's Disney partnership, Fire Emblem characters' same sex partnerships, and tons tons more. This week's outro music is "Courage Under Fire," from Shovel Knight, covered by Gentle Love.

Learn 100% more about the tuba in this episode than you’ve ever known! Norwegian tuba soloist and chamber musician Øystein Baadsvik is the only tuba virtuoso in the world to make a career exclusively as a soloist. He is also the only tuba player in the world to have a great story about touring with a punk band. He joins us all the way from Norway to tell us about this shadowy instrument: its size, its repertoire, and its fnugg. Audio production by Todd “Tall Texan” Hulslander with slings and arrows by Dacia Clay. Music in this episode: – Bass Tuba Concerto in F Minor, 1st mvmt, by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Performed by Øystein Baadsvik. – Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra 1st mvmt, by John Williams. Performed by Øystein Baadsvik. – Fnugg from The Front Row – Reserved (a Houston Public Media compilation CD). Performed by Øystein Baadsvik. – Fnugg from YouTube video – Blood Sweat and Tears tuba solo from YouTube video – The Cod Lovers – Encounters II for solo tuba, performed by Roger Bobo – Csárdás by Vittorio Monti, performed by Øystein Baadsvik. – Ordner seg (It’ll Be All Right) from Ferry Tales by Øystein Baadsvik. – Winter from the Four Seasons Concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, performed by Øystein Baadsvik. For more about Øystein Baadsvik: www.baadsvik.com. PS, The title for this show was inspired by a great band called 500 Megatons of Boogie. You can find out more about them here: www.reverbnation.com/500megatonsofboogie

Is there any hope left for the gaming industry? Only the #PS4NoDRM knows When we last left our intrepid heroes, Donald was ready to ragequit the entire industry... could Nintendo or Sony save the day? After a recap of post-E3 Microsoft hilarity (most of which is now  invalid thanks to 8:1 preorder ratios and the United States armed forces), the crew dives into the Sony press event. Needless to say, one five minute period saved everything, but did another five minute period cost Sony some PS4 controller sales? And how many press conferences contain Tesla coil shotguns AND Octodad? Before moving onto Nintendo, you'll hear from Nintendo World Report community manager JP Corboran on his E3 thoughts. Much money will be spent, and many copies of FIFA will be purchased. Also, if you don't like Mario 3D World, you're a communist and a fascist. Finally, it comes to Nintendo, in a segment plagued with as many technical issues as the Nintendo Direct itself was. Megatons are discussed, tears are shed over Retro's choice to take another run at Donkey Kong instead of lowering themselves to Metroid (That's enough - Ed) and everyone loses their mind over X, except Stephen who, you can probably tell, was crazy by this section anyway. Nintendo couldn't win E3, but did they at least try for the silver? The team will reconvene in a few days to get over their own E3 hangovers, and are looking forward to your comments - send them by email to nintendofreeradio@gmail.com or leave them here. Until next time, #DealWithIt. This episode was edited by Austen Parken, Stephen Shook and Donald Theriault. All music contained in this episode is used in accordance with fair use provisions.