SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout
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What is the SYSK “Weird Playlist” and why does this episode focus on the Nuclear Boy Scout?
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All right, Chuck here winding it down with number 11. We wanted to finish on an odd number because odd things are weird. And this is the SYSK Gets Weird playlist. The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout. What a great episode. I hope you guys enjoy it. I enjoyed it listening to it in QA the other day all over again. So listen to it right now. The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is a good old-fashioned barn burner of a Stuff You Should Know type topic. Woo!
Whiz-bang.
Chuck, somebody sent this in as a suggestion recently, I think, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, I think you and I had both been aware of this story, but we did get a recent suggestion from David Parcher.
Yeah, David Parcher. I think just a couple of weeks ago sent in this suggestion, and look at the timing.
Yeah. Well, thank you, David. And we're going to talk about another David. that is David Hahn, the nuclear boy scout. And this is one of those where we owe a huge debt to a single human because this story was, may have just gone fairly unnoticed as a pretty localized local newspaper item. If it hadn't have been found by a gentleman named Ken Silverstein who ended up writing a very large piece in Harper's Magazine and then a book called The Radioactive Boy Scout, colon, the true story of a boy in his backyard nuclear reactor. So big thanks to Ken. A lot of this came from your work.
Yeah, and shout out also to the journalists from the Natural Resources News Service, which is this investigative journalist group that just does a public good, like investigate stories and then turn around and give them to news outlets. And apparently that's how Ken came across the story and began researching it. So there's two people that were responsible for it at least.
Yeah. And three, because we have to count David Hahn, the Michigan teenager who in the 90s managed to create a nuclear reaction in the potting shed of his mom's house. It is a story that is interesting and amazing, but also very sad in its ending.
Yeah, and technically we should thank five people because it took Patty and Ken Hahn to reproduce and create David Hahn.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the SYSK “Weird Playlist” and why does this episode focus on the Nuclear Boy Scout?
0:00–8:39
2
Who was David Hahn and how did his childhood spark an obsession with nuclear chemistry?
8:39–18:54
3
What experiments did Hahn conduct as a teen – from nitroglycerin to neutron guns?
18:54–29:03
4
How did Hahn build a backyard nuclear reactor in his mother’s potting shed?
29:03–39:53
5
What happened when law‑enforcement and federal agencies discovered Hahn’s shed?
39:53–48:46
6
How did Hahn’s life unfold after the reactor was dismantled – Navy, addiction, and death?
48:46–51:05
Speakers
10 identifiedMore from Stuff You Should Know
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SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: What is Collective Hysteria?
SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Will We Find Evidence of Aliens by Their Engineering Projects?
SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: The Creepy Legacy of the Hotel Cecil
SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: The Max Headroom Incident
SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Mermaids: Not a real thing