WEBVTT
00:01.053 --> 00:14.991
[SPEAKER_04]: Coming through all of this evidence and trying to figure out exactly what my grandfather's role was and all of this has been honestly kind of dizzying, but every once in a while, I'll remember something from my childhood that suddenly makes way more sense with context.
00:15.883 --> 00:18.105
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember my sophomore year of high school spring break.
00:18.705 --> 00:22.028
[SPEAKER_04]: We've flew back to my grandpa's farm, we were sitting around the kitchen table eating lunch.
00:22.428 --> 00:31.374
[SPEAKER_04]: Hammond cheese sandwiches was store-bought salsa on them, which, looking back for a guy who ate a fillet of steak every night for dinner, he seemed to have a diverse palette.
00:32.375 --> 00:38.998
[SPEAKER_04]: We were sitting around the table making small talk when he asks what my favorite subject is at the moment, and I immediately say, Marine Biology.
00:39.739 --> 00:41.780
[SPEAKER_04]: He kind of nodded and smurked.
00:42.400 --> 00:54.526
[SPEAKER_04]: So I started explaining that we were learning about the mid-Atlantic shelf in the Mariana trench, and very casually, almost like he was talking about the weather, he goes, you know, I was on the crew that charted the depths of those for the first time.
00:55.247 --> 01:01.290
[SPEAKER_04]: Then he follows it up with, do you think your teacher would be interested in some of my handwritten records and charts from those missions?
01:02.472 --> 01:07.755
[SPEAKER_04]: And without really processing what he just offered me, I was just like, yeah, I'm sure my teacher would love that.
01:08.736 --> 01:15.479
[SPEAKER_04]: So if I fly back to the Southern California, I walk into my second period class, and my teacher, the stack of charts from my grandfather.
01:16.280 --> 01:18.641
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'll never forget the look Mr. Stark weather gave me.
01:19.321 --> 01:25.445
[SPEAKER_04]: It was the kind of look that just silently said, Who the fuck is your grandpa?
01:29.668 --> 01:34.449
[SPEAKER_04]: 1968, a year of profound historical and cultural change in America.
01:35.069 --> 01:41.871
[SPEAKER_04]: At a time, charged with hope, rapid social transformation, and political movements that would leave a lasting mark on the world.
01:42.631 --> 01:50.473
[SPEAKER_04]: The civil rights movement was at a tight, even as the nation reeled from the heartbreaking assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
01:51.093 --> 01:56.156
[SPEAKER_04]: Across the country, students staged walkouts and mass protests against the Vietnam War.
01:56.676 --> 02:03.120
[SPEAKER_04]: On television, Star Trek aired its first interracial kiss and the Apollo 8 became the first spacecraft to orbit the moon.
02:03.620 --> 02:12.965
[SPEAKER_04]: The Food Industrial Complex hadn't figured out how to buy or hack our sugar addictions and morbid obesity so everyone was hot and sexual harassment for the most part was seen as charming.
02:13.385 --> 02:20.429
[SPEAKER_04]: It was an era of culture change, open minds, big ideas, and blissfully free of any anxiety that might be triggered by a common section.
02:21.249 --> 02:24.091
[SPEAKER_04]: The signs you carry to protests were your status updates.
02:24.591 --> 02:31.695
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone's relationship status was, it's complicated, and America was still a few years away from learning that herpes is forever.
02:32.395 --> 02:37.278
[SPEAKER_04]: At the time, before Tech Startups were thing, Deep Sea Engineering was somehow the cool industry.
02:37.918 --> 02:43.343
[SPEAKER_04]: Open Floor Plants, enormous contracts, and absolutely no one explaining what they actually did for work.
02:44.023 --> 02:49.508
[SPEAKER_04]: And out of all those companies, Global Marine was the one, if you worked there, you knew you were on top.
02:49.829 --> 02:55.434
[SPEAKER_04]: Your boss was Curtis Crook, universally loved, somehow not terrifying door, always open.
02:55.834 --> 02:58.676
[SPEAKER_04]: And the respect everyone had for him, he gave it right back.
02:59.197 --> 03:03.841
[SPEAKER_04]: No ego, no weird power trips, just solid leadership before anyone called it that.
03:04.659 --> 03:19.614
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, it must have been wild when one day three CIA guys looking exactly like CIA guys just walked in pastroseption straight into the boss's corner office and we're like okay Everyone else you need to leave now
03:27.235 --> 03:38.417
[SPEAKER_04]: If this were a movie, this part would be a time lapse, just hours of me scrolling through countless declassified documents, loads of freedom of information and reports that my sister came on his set me.
03:38.778 --> 03:47.199
[SPEAKER_04]: Almost always at night, once the kids are asleep, illuminated only by my phone screen, all while my wife quietly lays next to me questioning her life's choices.
03:48.580 --> 03:54.421
[SPEAKER_04]: Keanu-Night, thank you for agreeing when I say that we've pretty much had to build this investigation from whatever scraps we could find.
03:54.957 --> 03:59.540
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we found those letters, and then we went as deep as we could on the internet without being put on a watch list.
04:00.401 --> 04:06.845
[SPEAKER_04]: And after the war of the timeline gets pretty crazy in 1954 back in Iowa, my Aunt Mary is born.
04:07.426 --> 04:20.235
[SPEAKER_04]: Then my grandpa and grandma moved to California in 1955, a year of lots of change, because it's also the year my uncle Mike was born, then in 1956, my dad Malcolm is born without Jesus.
04:20.732 --> 04:32.455
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the craziness continues because in 1957, Uncle Mallory is born in 1958, Uncle Mitch's born in 1959, Uncle Mark is born and then in 1961, Aunt Melinda's born.
04:32.475 --> 04:36.636
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, in 1963, Uncle Matt is born.
04:36.936 --> 04:38.016
[SPEAKER_04]: She's us.
04:38.416 --> 04:40.236
[SPEAKER_01]: She had a straight up litter.
04:40.817 --> 04:46.418
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, that is wild and negligent and gross.
04:47.878 --> 04:49.179
[SPEAKER_01]: God bless that woman, you know.
04:49.399 --> 05:08.187
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay so after making all of the kids his next real career blip is in the late 1960s when he starts working for a company called Global Marine which I guess just looks like an ocean-based text start-up essentially but doesn't really scream top secret CIA agent or anything
05:08.527 --> 05:11.690
[SPEAKER_02]: He's calling global marine and ambitious startup is literally an understatement.
05:11.770 --> 05:25.182
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the company quickly partnered with heavy weights like Continental, Union, Shell, Superior Oil, and like a very short amount of time and earned a reputation as the global leader in developing technology to reach national resources very even eat the ocean floor.
05:25.543 --> 05:31.228
[SPEAKER_04]: According to a company brochure at the time, global marine had the most versetile offshore drilling fleet in the world.
05:32.053 --> 05:33.554
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the age of expiration.
05:33.594 --> 05:35.235
[SPEAKER_02]: Americans just put a man on the moon.
05:35.275 --> 05:41.397
[SPEAKER_02]: Jacques Cousteau was turning the ocean into must-see TV, and deep sea exploration suddenly felt like the next great opportunity.
05:42.058 --> 05:42.978
[SPEAKER_04]: The pitch was simple.
05:43.238 --> 05:46.000
[SPEAKER_04]: Go deeper than anyone else and the payoff could be enormous.
05:46.400 --> 05:48.701
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Silicon Valley, but at the bottom of the ocean.
05:49.403 --> 05:52.145
[SPEAKER_04]: It's fun to imagine what the tech pros of the 1960s were like.
05:52.505 --> 05:54.847
[SPEAKER_04]: Ocean Obsess engineers who didn't know how to talk to women.
05:55.107 --> 05:59.911
[SPEAKER_04]: But then you remember, this was before the internet, and people were actually required to have a personality.
06:00.312 --> 06:05.696
[SPEAKER_04]: You couldn't just send an eggplant emoji and then disappear you had to make eye contact and ruin conversations in person.
06:06.096 --> 06:08.158
[SPEAKER_04]: Curtis Crook was not a weird tech pro.
06:08.658 --> 06:11.340
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't fit the modern American leader mold at all.
06:11.980 --> 06:20.065
[SPEAKER_04]: He was universally liked, had no ego, and his door was always open, which is insane for someone who had just skyrocketed at the top of the world's newest frontier.
06:20.805 --> 06:26.489
[SPEAKER_04]: I believe it was Mark Twain who once famously said a gentleman is someone who can play the guitar, but doesn't.
06:27.309 --> 06:28.190
[SPEAKER_04]: That's Curtis Cook.
06:28.830 --> 06:32.012
[SPEAKER_04]: Someone who had reached the top and didn't immediately start a podcast.
06:32.516 --> 06:37.302
[SPEAKER_02]: When you think about that level of success, Crook was really young, and he didn't lead with intimidation.
06:37.362 --> 06:42.508
[SPEAKER_02]: People respected him because he listened because he was fair, and because he didn't need an iron fist to be taken seriously.
06:43.710 --> 06:49.757
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was a bit of a vibe shift when all of a sudden three CIA agents walked into the office and ordered everyone to get out.
06:50.468 --> 06:54.610
[SPEAKER_04]: Curtis Kerko shocked, but not completely surprised that the CIA was there.
06:55.271 --> 06:59.053
[SPEAKER_04]: Because just a few months earlier, the Navy had paid a visit to global marine.
06:59.253 --> 07:01.414
[SPEAKER_04]: They were even nice enough to set an appointment.
07:02.135 --> 07:16.223
[SPEAKER_04]: The Navy asked Kirk some extremely vague questions about retrieving something heavy, valuable, and very hypothetical from the bottom of the ocean, preferably leaving it intact and unaffected by pressure change.
07:16.675 --> 07:23.961
[SPEAKER_02]: Crook even suggested pumping the whole full of concrete to stabilize it and yaddy yaddy yaddy yaddy yaddy anyway is the navy didn't bite and the job went to someone else.
07:24.742 --> 07:26.363
[SPEAKER_04]: Which brings us back to global marine?
07:26.843 --> 07:32.448
[SPEAKER_04]: Where Curtis Crook was sitting in his office with an audience of three CIA agents.
07:34.550 --> 07:40.495
[SPEAKER_04]: This is not a king shame, but the agent in the middle asked all the questions while the other two just watched.
07:41.055 --> 07:58.230
[SPEAKER_04]: His question was also about hypothetically retrieving something valuable from the ocean, but there were a few key differences from the Navy's questions, the weight, and, more notably, the depth, four times deeper than any deep sea recovery ever attempted.
07:58.713 --> 08:00.693
[SPEAKER_00]: The CIA's question sounded simple.
08:01.314 --> 08:02.074
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it possible?
08:02.454 --> 08:03.994
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was kind of insane.
08:04.174 --> 08:09.995
[SPEAKER_00]: Curtis Crook was asked to calculate depths and pressures of the ocean that no one had even contemplated before.
08:10.235 --> 08:11.976
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't Google that and you can't test it.
08:12.396 --> 08:15.376
[SPEAKER_00]: You're literally just guessing what is at the bottom of the earth.
08:16.777 --> 08:23.298
[SPEAKER_04]: So Crook tells the agents honestly, he doesn't know that he'd have to run numbers, figure out the pressure, the conditions all of it.
08:24.138 --> 08:26.619
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the mystery guy in charge just nods and says,
08:28.849 --> 08:32.870
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll leave you to think about it, and then they all just walked out.
08:34.251 --> 08:36.291
[SPEAKER_04]: No business card, nothing.
08:37.292 --> 08:37.672
[SPEAKER_04]: What?
08:38.272 --> 08:38.972
[SPEAKER_04]: The fuck?
08:40.172 --> 08:45.434
[SPEAKER_04]: A dramatic exit making crook the only one left in the building with one question.
08:47.475 --> 08:55.237
[SPEAKER_04]: What could possibly weigh 3,000 tons and be worth recovering from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?
08:56.898 --> 08:57.739
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it your ego?
08:58.200 --> 08:59.081
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
09:03.078 --> 09:10.802
[SPEAKER_04]: Just a few weeks before the CIA's impromptu visit to Global Marine on the other side of the world in Soviet Union waters, it was freezing, miserable.
09:11.423 --> 09:14.104
[SPEAKER_04]: But Captain Vladimir Cobb's art wasn't thinking about any of that.
09:14.825 --> 09:22.669
[SPEAKER_04]: He was staring at his submarine, K-129, whole number 722, and for him this thing wasn't just a warm machine.
09:23.329 --> 09:24.570
[SPEAKER_04]: It was basically a second home.
09:24.610 --> 09:29.133
[SPEAKER_04]: He spent the last four years of his life inside of it, work, secrets, friendships, the whole thing.
09:30.033 --> 09:33.674
[SPEAKER_04]: Those numbers, seven, two, two might as well have been his mailing address.
09:34.115 --> 09:36.916
[SPEAKER_04]: And this patrol, it was supposed to be his last one.
09:37.476 --> 09:39.977
[SPEAKER_04]: Moscow had promised him a promotion when he got back.
09:40.377 --> 09:44.298
[SPEAKER_04]: A desk job, a safe job, more time with his wife and his two children.
09:44.758 --> 09:46.119
[SPEAKER_04]: This guy was legit.
09:46.479 --> 09:53.322
[SPEAKER_04]: A Ukrainian graduate of the prestigious of a stop-up higher naval engineering school and the Soviet submarine school in Leningrad.
09:53.682 --> 09:56.983
[SPEAKER_04]: Captain Vladimir Cobb Zarr's career reputation was solid.
09:57.503 --> 10:06.445
[SPEAKER_04]: He was a tall man with bushy eyebrows, black hair, and according to Observers, smiling eyes that have been seasoned by the CO shit.
10:06.886 --> 10:11.647
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, according to the record, he was super, super gorgeous, and he didn't put up was shit.
10:11.807 --> 10:12.647
[SPEAKER_03]: Just a professional.
10:13.227 --> 10:16.808
[SPEAKER_04]: The Russian submarine's mission itself was supposed to be pretty routine.
10:17.088 --> 10:19.909
[SPEAKER_02]: Bring this up in, refit the missiles, normal stuff.
10:20.376 --> 10:22.778
[SPEAKER_04]: but the geopolitical chessboard was shifting.
10:23.418 --> 10:28.162
[SPEAKER_04]: North Korea had captured one of our ships, and Soviet intelligence was granted access.
10:28.682 --> 10:33.546
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything goes sideways and suddenly Moscow says, you know, actually, never mind.
10:34.447 --> 10:36.989
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, scratch the overhaul, we have some new orders for you.
10:38.089 --> 10:45.355
[SPEAKER_04]: Captain Cubsar was suddenly pulled away from that precious time with his family, a rare occurrence to begin with, and sent straight back out.
10:45.995 --> 10:50.179
[SPEAKER_04]: Still, he's thinking, okay, one last run, then I'm done.
10:51.420 --> 10:54.262
[SPEAKER_04]: Except this deployment is weird.
10:55.443 --> 10:56.824
[SPEAKER_04]: It all just seemed off.
10:57.225 --> 11:06.713
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, at the last minute, Top Brass brings on an additional officer to look over 14 new guys, 10 of whom were spec ops and had absolutely none of the regular C training.
11:07.213 --> 11:11.797
[SPEAKER_04]: A submarine crew isn't something you just casually add people to, it's tight quarters.
11:13.067 --> 11:22.169
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think about that a lot, because touring as a stand-up comic, I've been lucky enough to travel the world with the USO and spend time on military bases performing for our service members.
11:22.629 --> 11:26.030
[SPEAKER_04]: Honestly, it's easily been the most rewarding thing I've done with my career so far.
11:26.090 --> 11:34.252
[SPEAKER_04]: I've told jokes on American bases in Japan, Spain, Italy, Greece, I even got to do an arrested landing on an aircraft carrier near Syria.
11:34.892 --> 11:39.633
[SPEAKER_04]: I've done Parajum Training, been chased by guard dogs, seen our drones, all the cool stuff.
11:40.413 --> 11:45.035
[SPEAKER_04]: But weirdly, the best part was always just sitting down in a mess hall for lunch and talking with the troops.
11:45.835 --> 11:47.716
[SPEAKER_04]: I was nervous the first few times.
11:47.736 --> 11:58.380
[SPEAKER_04]: I, in my head, I just kind of assumed everyone would be a jock, and I wasn't sure how my heartfelt dad comedy was gonna land, compared to, you know, whatever stand-ups they'd seen before.
11:59.240 --> 12:06.323
[SPEAKER_04]: And all of that anxiety immediately went away when a 20-year-old airman in Dakota just came up to me and asked, Bro, how sick is the culture here?
12:07.144 --> 12:14.010
[SPEAKER_04]: But for the most part, every service member I met across every branch was just a solid human being.
12:14.591 --> 12:23.099
[SPEAKER_04]: And that surprised me in a good way, because as divided as everything's felt back home the last few years, they were kind of above it all.
12:23.940 --> 12:28.404
[SPEAKER_04]: No culture war energy, no rhetoric, just people doing their job.
12:29.527 --> 12:30.848
[SPEAKER_04]: Before you go out on a U.S.O.
12:30.868 --> 12:47.584
[SPEAKER_04]: tour, they send you this PDF with a proof phrasing and messaging like we don't say servicemen and women anymore, you say service members and you're supposed to say things like thank you for everything you're doing, everyone back home is so proud of you and the younger troops they eat that mission led stuff up totally works.
12:48.144 --> 12:51.868
[SPEAKER_04]: But you talk to anyone that's been there long enough, they recognize the talking points.
12:52.963 --> 12:54.184
[SPEAKER_04]: And those guys will level with you.
12:54.544 --> 12:55.764
[SPEAKER_04]: They'll let you know, yeah, sure.
12:55.824 --> 13:00.226
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe the first time around, we enlisted out of a sense of patriotism or duty.
13:00.786 --> 13:06.329
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of the times, when people re-up or re-enlist and keep coming back, it's not for the mission.
13:07.169 --> 13:21.215
[SPEAKER_04]: It's for the friends and family members that have been forged out of this shared experience, you know, you have to spend so much time away from your actual families that you kind of end up creating a new nuclear one on deployment.
13:22.155 --> 13:29.123
[SPEAKER_04]: So I have to imagine, on something as tight quarters as a submarine, that those crews are incredibly tight knit.
13:29.223 --> 13:34.229
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I can barely handle a stent of three or four days with my extended family over the holidays.
13:34.389 --> 13:43.059
[SPEAKER_04]: So I imagine on something like that, the crew kind of almost becomes an extension of the submarine, like it's working just as well as every other mechanical part of that vessel.
13:43.459 --> 13:51.888
[SPEAKER_04]: which is why if we time travel back to the Cold War and bounce back to Russia, it must have felt pretty unusual, pretty unnerving.
13:52.188 --> 14:02.399
[SPEAKER_04]: To go back to your submarine, knowing it hadn't undergone the normal maintenance, but then you're also not seeing the faces the people you usually serve with, and are instead looking at members of the KGB.
14:03.360 --> 14:14.916
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, the K129 is a submarine so surrounded by folklore, conspiracy theories, and even has a place in Hollywood history as the focal point of the hunt for Ed October.
14:15.657 --> 14:19.603
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom Clancy's first novel in the first ever mention of his character, Jack Ryan.
14:20.493 --> 14:33.583
[SPEAKER_04]: There's this long-running rumor that Tom Clancy might have had ties to the CIA or that the CIA might have encouraged some of his themes as a way to ease the public and to stories that sounded insane, but maybe weren't so far from the truth.
14:34.244 --> 14:41.049
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, what if we got an author to write fiction that mirrors real missions just enough that when people hear rumors, they confuse them with the book?
14:41.589 --> 14:50.698
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, weirdly, one of Alec Baldwin's first lines to Sean Connery in the movie The Hunt for Out of October is, I'm not an agent, I just write books for the CIA.
14:51.679 --> 14:57.044
[SPEAKER_04]: Before Clancy ever shopped The Hunt for Out of October, he sent the manuscript to the U.S. Navy as a courtesy.
14:58.005 --> 15:06.773
[SPEAKER_04]: The Navy bought it outright, deleted a hundred pages, and then gave it back to him with a note that basically said, you can publish this version.
15:09.887 --> 15:17.168
[SPEAKER_04]: Killin' and I know that we're not experts when it comes to any of this, which is why we sat down with historian, comedian, and host of the podcast, HILF.
15:17.648 --> 15:20.249
[SPEAKER_04]: History, I'd like to fuck, Don Brody.
15:20.629 --> 15:27.690
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, I think among the reasons I love the Cold War is because it's so not love the Cold War qualified, because I love to fuck history.
15:27.710 --> 15:30.411
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like war makes me go home.
15:30.651 --> 15:39.072
[SPEAKER_03]: The Cold War in general is because of how many parallels there are to the people, the individuals, and the broad strokes that are reminiscent of personal relationships.
15:39.252 --> 15:41.313
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, even just the way it's described, you know what I mean?
15:41.333 --> 15:41.634
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
15:41.734 --> 15:51.601
[SPEAKER_03]: Because like, the end of World War II was so victorious, especially like from an American point of view, it was like, we didn't even get that hurt at home.
15:51.941 --> 15:56.924
[SPEAKER_03]: The vast majority of our pain was happened really far away without great photos.
15:56.944 --> 15:59.686
[SPEAKER_03]: And even the photos we saw were like, God, we look so good.
15:59.706 --> 16:00.387
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
16:00.907 --> 16:02.668
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, look at our pictures.
16:02.868 --> 16:05.170
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like amazing, you know?
16:06.353 --> 16:07.653
[SPEAKER_03]: Not to say there wasn't any enormous.
16:07.713 --> 16:14.475
[SPEAKER_03]: But the pain in the loss was also this economic rebound that paralleled it and the kissing in the streets and like women and wow, I was great.
16:15.355 --> 16:27.718
[SPEAKER_03]: And the citizen soldiers who were not military before just like got and came home and then had this like vastly improved economic position and didn't have to deal with war again.
16:29.178 --> 16:33.499
[SPEAKER_03]: And like we grabbed hands with the Chinese and we grabbed hands with the Russians and we just,
16:34.219 --> 16:40.793
[SPEAKER_03]: We did it, we did it, we did it, we did it and just like how long it took to be like
16:44.252 --> 16:49.735
[SPEAKER_03]: What are we doing over here?
16:49.795 --> 16:56.898
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like how also it had to be done on the backdrop of like we world we're one in world we're two we're so close together.
16:57.258 --> 17:01.480
[SPEAKER_03]: So like we absolutely can't convince even the people who want to go back in back in.
17:01.560 --> 17:07.062
[SPEAKER_03]: So the atmosphere of like friendly we're definitely don't want to go to war again.
17:07.082 --> 17:08.003
[SPEAKER_03]: We are poised.
17:08.723 --> 17:12.506
[SPEAKER_03]: entirely for the next war, which in some ways would be helpful if it happened.
17:12.786 --> 17:18.590
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that complex and, like, kind of sounds reminiscent of what we're moving through right now.
17:18.730 --> 17:20.691
[SPEAKER_03]: It is, isn't it?
17:21.191 --> 17:23.133
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I mean, it really is hotter.
17:23.713 --> 17:24.033
[UNKNOWN]: Exactly.
17:24.434 --> 17:29.657
[SPEAKER_03]: So, to that extent, I guess, I think we're still in it.
17:29.677 --> 17:30.878
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think the Cold War ever ended.
17:30.978 --> 17:31.979
[SPEAKER_03]: I totally agree with you.
17:32.019 --> 17:33.820
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the myth was when the wall came down.
17:35.882 --> 17:39.923
[SPEAKER_04]: It was the height of the Cold War and weirdly, things weren't that different from today.
17:40.584 --> 17:42.204
[SPEAKER_04]: Russia versus the US.
17:42.804 --> 17:46.346
[SPEAKER_04]: Threads that weren't technically Threads warnings that weren't technically warnings.
17:46.926 --> 17:52.248
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone insisting that they don't want escalation while doing things that feel very escalation adjacent.
17:53.068 --> 17:54.128
[SPEAKER_04]: Sounds familiar.
17:55.129 --> 18:00.290
[SPEAKER_04]: In the 1960s, Americans were worried about nuclear missiles today, its cyber attacks, disinformation,
18:02.970 --> 18:08.793
[SPEAKER_04]: Which is just really the modern day version of I'm not touching you while hovering your finger and inch away from someone's face.
18:10.433 --> 18:20.098
[SPEAKER_04]: Shortly after midnight on February 28th, the K-129's desolange and fired off and headed towards what Russians called the Lonelyest Place on Earth, Petro Publosc.
18:20.858 --> 18:25.300
[SPEAKER_04]: It's literally the most volcanic place on the planet.
18:25.400 --> 18:29.342
[SPEAKER_04]: 26 active volcanoes just constantly throwing ash and steam into the air.
18:29.953 --> 18:35.858
[SPEAKER_04]: They have to navigate through three rocks, cut through icy water, before they can finally submerge into the Pacific.
18:36.459 --> 18:41.063
[SPEAKER_04]: And once they're heading south, the K-129 sends a quick check-in burst to Moscow.
18:41.543 --> 18:43.405
[SPEAKER_04]: Basically, I wore good text.
18:44.225 --> 18:50.571
[SPEAKER_04]: After that, as when traditionally Vladimir would finally be able to open a sealed orders and actually find out what his mission was.
18:51.118 --> 18:57.782
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a lot of theories about what happened to the K-129, and yet some of them go full on conspiracy mode.
18:58.263 --> 19:12.412
[SPEAKER_04]: Many believe that the extra KGB officers on board had their own secret orders to take control of this up and launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. Three men who called the same country home, pointing guns at your head.
19:13.513 --> 19:19.637
[SPEAKER_04]: All of your fellow sailors are locked up in the next room hearing these commands being shouted at you from behind a steel door.
19:20.362 --> 19:32.226
[SPEAKER_04]: This wasn't a movie, there was no Jack Ryan, no option to defect, and now Captain First Rank Vladimir Kospar was the only one in possession of the launch codes and being forced to launch a nuclear attack on American soil.
19:33.227 --> 19:45.071
[SPEAKER_04]: The KGB officers relentlessly keep screaming, enter the codes, enter the codes, enter the codes, and he did, he entered the code, but not the code to launch.
19:50.550 --> 19:59.898
[SPEAKER_04]: small explosions detonated every hatch blew open and the submarine plummeted to the bottom of the Pacific before the change of pressure could detonate any of the warheads.
20:01.019 --> 20:02.440
[SPEAKER_04]: The K-129 was gone.
20:04.101 --> 20:07.524
[SPEAKER_04]: It and all its men drifted to the bottom of the Pacific.
20:08.996 --> 20:12.379
[SPEAKER_04]: with the sub in silent mode before missing its last communication relay.
20:13.119 --> 20:21.506
[SPEAKER_04]: Russia was left completely in the dark and they began scrambling planes, constantly patrolling the waters where they believed the K-129 should have been.
20:22.747 --> 20:24.989
[SPEAKER_04]: Clancy understood something that the K-129 Prove was true.
20:27.151 --> 20:29.233
[SPEAKER_04]: The scariest part of the Cold War wasn't what we knew.
20:30.014 --> 20:30.775
[SPEAKER_04]: It was what we didn't.
20:31.596 --> 20:40.447
[SPEAKER_04]: The fact that the K-129 sank in 1968, and it didn't become public knowledge until years later, that's not a failure of history, that was the design.
20:41.767 --> 20:44.048
[SPEAKER_04]: And once that curtain was pulled back, even just a little.
20:44.969 --> 20:49.172
[SPEAKER_04]: It changed how you thought about power, secrecy, and the story's government's tell.
20:49.332 --> 20:56.776
[SPEAKER_04]: So when people say Tom Clancy's books feel too detailed or too realistic, that's why he wasn't predicting the future.
20:57.577 --> 20:59.038
[SPEAKER_04]: He was paying attention to the past.
20:59.969 --> 21:07.775
[SPEAKER_04]: K129 showed that the real world already sounded like a thriller, we just weren't supposed to hear about it, and that's kind of the unsettling takeaway.
21:08.796 --> 21:14.880
[SPEAKER_04]: Not that Tom Clancy exaggerated, but that if anything, he might have been toning it down.
21:16.041 --> 21:19.384
[SPEAKER_04]: The uncomfortable truth is that we don't actually know what happened.
21:20.613 --> 21:22.073
[SPEAKER_04]: What we do know for sure is this.
21:22.833 --> 21:27.094
[SPEAKER_04]: On March 11, 1968, 40 degrees north latitude off the coast of Hawaii.
21:27.814 --> 21:29.855
[SPEAKER_04]: The K-129 was lost.
21:30.995 --> 21:38.677
[SPEAKER_04]: And whatever happened, it happened fast, sending the entire sub, its men, and its nuclear arsenal to the bottom of the Pacific.
21:39.277 --> 21:42.177
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably so fast that the crew didn't even have time to process it.
21:43.998 --> 21:46.738
[SPEAKER_04]: Cubs are would never returned to his wife in his two kids.
21:51.008 --> 22:00.470
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, his family would not be made aware that anything was even wrong until an appalling six months later, when the families were finally notified that the men on board were presumed dead.
22:01.410 --> 22:07.791
[SPEAKER_04]: A phrase used intentionally by Moscow that meant Vladimir's family would never receive the military pension that he was owed.
22:08.491 --> 22:12.612
[SPEAKER_04]: He would receive the same pension as a soldier who accidentally fell and hit his head.
22:13.872 --> 22:20.053
[SPEAKER_04]: The whole of 722, once a homoway from home, a promise of a better future to Vladimir and his family.
22:21.350 --> 22:26.095
[SPEAKER_04]: was now as tombstone, 15,000 feet at the bottom of the ocean.
22:27.456 --> 22:40.930
[SPEAKER_04]: The US and Russia would continue to tensly tiptoe through its cold war, but when that submarine and the fate of its men hit the bottom of the Pacific, we were listening.
22:48.077 --> 22:50.079
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, thanks for listening to this week's episode.
22:50.320 --> 22:55.165
[SPEAKER_04]: Be sure to follow and listen along to our amazing guest Don Brody on her podcast HILF.
22:55.786 --> 23:02.113
[SPEAKER_04]: This series is hosted by myself Hunter Hill, my sister Kaelan Hill, and is a nothing to see here production.
23:02.873 --> 23:06.017
[SPEAKER_04]: Executively produced by Hunter Hill, Kaelan Hill, Ed dosick.
23:06.297 --> 23:08.458
[SPEAKER_04]: and produced by Jess Sonnemfeld-Jallis.
23:08.678 --> 23:17.501
[SPEAKER_04]: Video interviews were produced by Kita Mascarrow, and if you're enjoying the show, please be sure to follow the podcast, leave us a review, and subscribe wherever you are listening.
23:17.641 --> 23:21.463
[SPEAKER_04]: It really does make a huge difference, and helps other people discover the story.
23:21.803 --> 23:29.986
[SPEAKER_04]: You can also join our sub-stack community for exclusive content, including source documents, extended celebrity interviews behind the scenes updates, and much more.
23:30.266 --> 23:38.848
[SPEAKER_04]: and one last thing, every episode that will be coming out as either been recorded in my tiny home office or running and running it while out on the road.
23:39.208 --> 23:44.550
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you so much for being here as my sister and I unravel this crazy story.
23:44.690 --> 23:48.171
[SPEAKER_04]: Hope to see you next week as we dive even deeper into this secret.
00:01.053 --> 00:14.991
[SPEAKER_04]: Coming through all of this evidence and trying to figure out exactly what my grandfather's role was and all of this has been honestly kind of dizzying, but every once in a while, I'll remember something from my childhood that suddenly makes way more sense with context.
00:15.883 --> 00:18.105
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember my sophomore year of high school spring break.
00:18.705 --> 00:22.028
[SPEAKER_04]: We've flew back to my grandpa's farm, we were sitting around the kitchen table eating lunch.
00:22.428 --> 00:31.374
[SPEAKER_04]: Hammond cheese sandwiches was store-bought salsa on them, which, looking back for a guy who ate a fillet of steak every night for dinner, he seemed to have a diverse palette.
00:32.375 --> 00:38.998
[SPEAKER_04]: We were sitting around the table making small talk when he asks what my favorite subject is at the moment, and I immediately say, Marine Biology.
00:39.739 --> 00:41.780
[SPEAKER_04]: He kind of nodded and smurked.
00:42.400 --> 00:54.526
[SPEAKER_04]: So I started explaining that we were learning about the mid-Atlantic shelf in the Mariana trench, and very casually, almost like he was talking about the weather, he goes, you know, I was on the crew that charted the depths of those for the first time.
00:55.247 --> 01:01.290
[SPEAKER_04]: Then he follows it up with, do you think your teacher would be interested in some of my handwritten records and charts from those missions?
01:02.472 --> 01:07.755
[SPEAKER_04]: And without really processing what he just offered me, I was just like, yeah, I'm sure my teacher would love that.
01:08.736 --> 01:15.479
[SPEAKER_04]: So if I fly back to the Southern California, I walk into my second period class, and my teacher, the stack of charts from my grandfather.
01:16.280 --> 01:18.641
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'll never forget the look Mr. Stark weather gave me.
01:19.321 --> 01:25.445
[SPEAKER_04]: It was the kind of look that just silently said, Who the fuck is your grandpa?
01:29.668 --> 01:34.449
[SPEAKER_04]: 1968, a year of profound historical and cultural change in America.
01:35.069 --> 01:41.871
[SPEAKER_04]: At a time, charged with hope, rapid social transformation, and political movements that would leave a lasting mark on the world.
01:42.631 --> 01:50.473
[SPEAKER_04]: The civil rights movement was at a tight, even as the nation reeled from the heartbreaking assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
01:51.093 --> 01:56.156
[SPEAKER_04]: Across the country, students staged walkouts and mass protests against the Vietnam War.
01:56.676 --> 02:03.120
[SPEAKER_04]: On television, Star Trek aired its first interracial kiss and the Apollo 8 became the first spacecraft to orbit the moon.
02:03.620 --> 02:12.965
[SPEAKER_04]: The Food Industrial Complex hadn't figured out how to buy or hack our sugar addictions and morbid obesity so everyone was hot and sexual harassment for the most part was seen as charming.
02:13.385 --> 02:20.429
[SPEAKER_04]: It was an era of culture change, open minds, big ideas, and blissfully free of any anxiety that might be triggered by a common section.
02:21.249 --> 02:24.091
[SPEAKER_04]: The signs you carry to protests were your status updates.
02:24.591 --> 02:31.695
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone's relationship status was, it's complicated, and America was still a few years away from learning that herpes is forever.
02:32.395 --> 02:37.278
[SPEAKER_04]: At the time, before Tech Startups were thing, Deep Sea Engineering was somehow the cool industry.
02:37.918 --> 02:43.343
[SPEAKER_04]: Open Floor Plants, enormous contracts, and absolutely no one explaining what they actually did for work.
02:44.023 --> 02:49.508
[SPEAKER_04]: And out of all those companies, Global Marine was the one, if you worked there, you knew you were on top.
02:49.829 --> 02:55.434
[SPEAKER_04]: Your boss was Curtis Crook, universally loved, somehow not terrifying door, always open.
02:55.834 --> 02:58.676
[SPEAKER_04]: And the respect everyone had for him, he gave it right back.
02:59.197 --> 03:03.841
[SPEAKER_04]: No ego, no weird power trips, just solid leadership before anyone called it that.
03:04.659 --> 03:19.614
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, it must have been wild when one day three CIA guys looking exactly like CIA guys just walked in pastroseption straight into the boss's corner office and we're like okay Everyone else you need to leave now
03:27.235 --> 03:38.417
[SPEAKER_04]: If this were a movie, this part would be a time lapse, just hours of me scrolling through countless declassified documents, loads of freedom of information and reports that my sister came on his set me.
03:38.778 --> 03:47.199
[SPEAKER_04]: Almost always at night, once the kids are asleep, illuminated only by my phone screen, all while my wife quietly lays next to me questioning her life's choices.
03:48.580 --> 03:54.421
[SPEAKER_04]: Keanu-Night, thank you for agreeing when I say that we've pretty much had to build this investigation from whatever scraps we could find.
03:54.957 --> 03:59.540
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we found those letters, and then we went as deep as we could on the internet without being put on a watch list.
04:00.401 --> 04:06.845
[SPEAKER_04]: And after the war of the timeline gets pretty crazy in 1954 back in Iowa, my Aunt Mary is born.
04:07.426 --> 04:20.235
[SPEAKER_04]: Then my grandpa and grandma moved to California in 1955, a year of lots of change, because it's also the year my uncle Mike was born, then in 1956, my dad Malcolm is born without Jesus.
04:20.732 --> 04:32.455
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the craziness continues because in 1957, Uncle Mallory is born in 1958, Uncle Mitch's born in 1959, Uncle Mark is born and then in 1961, Aunt Melinda's born.
04:32.475 --> 04:36.636
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, in 1963, Uncle Matt is born.
04:36.936 --> 04:38.016
[SPEAKER_04]: She's us.
04:38.416 --> 04:40.236
[SPEAKER_01]: She had a straight up litter.
04:40.817 --> 04:46.418
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, that is wild and negligent and gross.
04:47.878 --> 04:49.179
[SPEAKER_01]: God bless that woman, you know.
04:49.399 --> 05:08.187
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay so after making all of the kids his next real career blip is in the late 1960s when he starts working for a company called Global Marine which I guess just looks like an ocean-based text start-up essentially but doesn't really scream top secret CIA agent or anything
05:08.527 --> 05:11.690
[SPEAKER_02]: He's calling global marine and ambitious startup is literally an understatement.
05:11.770 --> 05:25.182
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the company quickly partnered with heavy weights like Continental, Union, Shell, Superior Oil, and like a very short amount of time and earned a reputation as the global leader in developing technology to reach national resources very even eat the ocean floor.
05:25.543 --> 05:31.228
[SPEAKER_04]: According to a company brochure at the time, global marine had the most versetile offshore drilling fleet in the world.
05:32.053 --> 05:33.554
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the age of expiration.
05:33.594 --> 05:35.235
[SPEAKER_02]: Americans just put a man on the moon.
05:35.275 --> 05:41.397
[SPEAKER_02]: Jacques Cousteau was turning the ocean into must-see TV, and deep sea exploration suddenly felt like the next great opportunity.
05:42.058 --> 05:42.978
[SPEAKER_04]: The pitch was simple.
05:43.238 --> 05:46.000
[SPEAKER_04]: Go deeper than anyone else and the payoff could be enormous.
05:46.400 --> 05:48.701
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Silicon Valley, but at the bottom of the ocean.
05:49.403 --> 05:52.145
[SPEAKER_04]: It's fun to imagine what the tech pros of the 1960s were like.
05:52.505 --> 05:54.847
[SPEAKER_04]: Ocean Obsess engineers who didn't know how to talk to women.
05:55.107 --> 05:59.911
[SPEAKER_04]: But then you remember, this was before the internet, and people were actually required to have a personality.
06:00.312 --> 06:05.696
[SPEAKER_04]: You couldn't just send an eggplant emoji and then disappear you had to make eye contact and ruin conversations in person.
06:06.096 --> 06:08.158
[SPEAKER_04]: Curtis Crook was not a weird tech pro.
06:08.658 --> 06:11.340
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't fit the modern American leader mold at all.
06:11.980 --> 06:20.065
[SPEAKER_04]: He was universally liked, had no ego, and his door was always open, which is insane for someone who had just skyrocketed at the top of the world's newest frontier.
06:20.805 --> 06:26.489
[SPEAKER_04]: I believe it was Mark Twain who once famously said a gentleman is someone who can play the guitar, but doesn't.
06:27.309 --> 06:28.190
[SPEAKER_04]: That's Curtis Cook.
06:28.830 --> 06:32.012
[SPEAKER_04]: Someone who had reached the top and didn't immediately start a podcast.
06:32.516 --> 06:37.302
[SPEAKER_02]: When you think about that level of success, Crook was really young, and he didn't lead with intimidation.
06:37.362 --> 06:42.508
[SPEAKER_02]: People respected him because he listened because he was fair, and because he didn't need an iron fist to be taken seriously.
06:43.710 --> 06:49.757
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was a bit of a vibe shift when all of a sudden three CIA agents walked into the office and ordered everyone to get out.
06:50.468 --> 06:54.610
[SPEAKER_04]: Curtis Kerko shocked, but not completely surprised that the CIA was there.
06:55.271 --> 06:59.053
[SPEAKER_04]: Because just a few months earlier, the Navy had paid a visit to global marine.
06:59.253 --> 07:01.414
[SPEAKER_04]: They were even nice enough to set an appointment.
07:02.135 --> 07:16.223
[SPEAKER_04]: The Navy asked Kirk some extremely vague questions about retrieving something heavy, valuable, and very hypothetical from the bottom of the ocean, preferably leaving it intact and unaffected by pressure change.
07:16.675 --> 07:23.961
[SPEAKER_02]: Crook even suggested pumping the whole full of concrete to stabilize it and yaddy yaddy yaddy yaddy yaddy anyway is the navy didn't bite and the job went to someone else.
07:24.742 --> 07:26.363
[SPEAKER_04]: Which brings us back to global marine?
07:26.843 --> 07:32.448
[SPEAKER_04]: Where Curtis Crook was sitting in his office with an audience of three CIA agents.
07:34.550 --> 07:40.495
[SPEAKER_04]: This is not a king shame, but the agent in the middle asked all the questions while the other two just watched.
07:41.055 --> 07:58.230
[SPEAKER_04]: His question was also about hypothetically retrieving something valuable from the ocean, but there were a few key differences from the Navy's questions, the weight, and, more notably, the depth, four times deeper than any deep sea recovery ever attempted.
07:58.713 --> 08:00.693
[SPEAKER_00]: The CIA's question sounded simple.
08:01.314 --> 08:02.074
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it possible?
08:02.454 --> 08:03.994
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was kind of insane.
08:04.174 --> 08:09.995
[SPEAKER_00]: Curtis Crook was asked to calculate depths and pressures of the ocean that no one had even contemplated before.
08:10.235 --> 08:11.976
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't Google that and you can't test it.
08:12.396 --> 08:15.376
[SPEAKER_00]: You're literally just guessing what is at the bottom of the earth.
08:16.777 --> 08:23.298
[SPEAKER_04]: So Crook tells the agents honestly, he doesn't know that he'd have to run numbers, figure out the pressure, the conditions all of it.
08:24.138 --> 08:26.619
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the mystery guy in charge just nods and says,
08:28.849 --> 08:32.870
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll leave you to think about it, and then they all just walked out.
08:34.251 --> 08:36.291
[SPEAKER_04]: No business card, nothing.
08:37.292 --> 08:37.672
[SPEAKER_04]: What?
08:38.272 --> 08:38.972
[SPEAKER_04]: The fuck?
08:40.172 --> 08:45.434
[SPEAKER_04]: A dramatic exit making crook the only one left in the building with one question.
08:47.475 --> 08:55.237
[SPEAKER_04]: What could possibly weigh 3,000 tons and be worth recovering from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?
08:56.898 --> 08:57.739
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it your ego?
08:58.200 --> 08:59.081
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
09:03.078 --> 09:10.802
[SPEAKER_04]: Just a few weeks before the CIA's impromptu visit to Global Marine on the other side of the world in Soviet Union waters, it was freezing, miserable.
09:11.423 --> 09:14.104
[SPEAKER_04]: But Captain Vladimir Cobb's art wasn't thinking about any of that.
09:14.825 --> 09:22.669
[SPEAKER_04]: He was staring at his submarine, K-129, whole number 722, and for him this thing wasn't just a warm machine.
09:23.329 --> 09:24.570
[SPEAKER_04]: It was basically a second home.
09:24.610 --> 09:29.133
[SPEAKER_04]: He spent the last four years of his life inside of it, work, secrets, friendships, the whole thing.
09:30.033 --> 09:33.674
[SPEAKER_04]: Those numbers, seven, two, two might as well have been his mailing address.
09:34.115 --> 09:36.916
[SPEAKER_04]: And this patrol, it was supposed to be his last one.
09:37.476 --> 09:39.977
[SPEAKER_04]: Moscow had promised him a promotion when he got back.
09:40.377 --> 09:44.298
[SPEAKER_04]: A desk job, a safe job, more time with his wife and his two children.
09:44.758 --> 09:46.119
[SPEAKER_04]: This guy was legit.
09:46.479 --> 09:53.322
[SPEAKER_04]: A Ukrainian graduate of the prestigious of a stop-up higher naval engineering school and the Soviet submarine school in Leningrad.
09:53.682 --> 09:56.983
[SPEAKER_04]: Captain Vladimir Cobb Zarr's career reputation was solid.
09:57.503 --> 10:06.445
[SPEAKER_04]: He was a tall man with bushy eyebrows, black hair, and according to Observers, smiling eyes that have been seasoned by the CO shit.
10:06.886 --> 10:11.647
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, according to the record, he was super, super gorgeous, and he didn't put up was shit.
10:11.807 --> 10:12.647
[SPEAKER_03]: Just a professional.
10:13.227 --> 10:16.808
[SPEAKER_04]: The Russian submarine's mission itself was supposed to be pretty routine.
10:17.088 --> 10:19.909
[SPEAKER_02]: Bring this up in, refit the missiles, normal stuff.
10:20.376 --> 10:22.778
[SPEAKER_04]: but the geopolitical chessboard was shifting.
10:23.418 --> 10:28.162
[SPEAKER_04]: North Korea had captured one of our ships, and Soviet intelligence was granted access.
10:28.682 --> 10:33.546
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything goes sideways and suddenly Moscow says, you know, actually, never mind.
10:34.447 --> 10:36.989
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, scratch the overhaul, we have some new orders for you.
10:38.089 --> 10:45.355
[SPEAKER_04]: Captain Cubsar was suddenly pulled away from that precious time with his family, a rare occurrence to begin with, and sent straight back out.
10:45.995 --> 10:50.179
[SPEAKER_04]: Still, he's thinking, okay, one last run, then I'm done.
10:51.420 --> 10:54.262
[SPEAKER_04]: Except this deployment is weird.
10:55.443 --> 10:56.824
[SPEAKER_04]: It all just seemed off.
10:57.225 --> 11:06.713
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, at the last minute, Top Brass brings on an additional officer to look over 14 new guys, 10 of whom were spec ops and had absolutely none of the regular C training.
11:07.213 --> 11:11.797
[SPEAKER_04]: A submarine crew isn't something you just casually add people to, it's tight quarters.
11:13.067 --> 11:22.169
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think about that a lot, because touring as a stand-up comic, I've been lucky enough to travel the world with the USO and spend time on military bases performing for our service members.
11:22.629 --> 11:26.030
[SPEAKER_04]: Honestly, it's easily been the most rewarding thing I've done with my career so far.
11:26.090 --> 11:34.252
[SPEAKER_04]: I've told jokes on American bases in Japan, Spain, Italy, Greece, I even got to do an arrested landing on an aircraft carrier near Syria.
11:34.892 --> 11:39.633
[SPEAKER_04]: I've done Parajum Training, been chased by guard dogs, seen our drones, all the cool stuff.
11:40.413 --> 11:45.035
[SPEAKER_04]: But weirdly, the best part was always just sitting down in a mess hall for lunch and talking with the troops.
11:45.835 --> 11:47.716
[SPEAKER_04]: I was nervous the first few times.
11:47.736 --> 11:58.380
[SPEAKER_04]: I, in my head, I just kind of assumed everyone would be a jock, and I wasn't sure how my heartfelt dad comedy was gonna land, compared to, you know, whatever stand-ups they'd seen before.
11:59.240 --> 12:06.323
[SPEAKER_04]: And all of that anxiety immediately went away when a 20-year-old airman in Dakota just came up to me and asked, Bro, how sick is the culture here?
12:07.144 --> 12:14.010
[SPEAKER_04]: But for the most part, every service member I met across every branch was just a solid human being.
12:14.591 --> 12:23.099
[SPEAKER_04]: And that surprised me in a good way, because as divided as everything's felt back home the last few years, they were kind of above it all.
12:23.940 --> 12:28.404
[SPEAKER_04]: No culture war energy, no rhetoric, just people doing their job.
12:29.527 --> 12:30.848
[SPEAKER_04]: Before you go out on a U.S.O.
12:30.868 --> 12:47.584
[SPEAKER_04]: tour, they send you this PDF with a proof phrasing and messaging like we don't say servicemen and women anymore, you say service members and you're supposed to say things like thank you for everything you're doing, everyone back home is so proud of you and the younger troops they eat that mission led stuff up totally works.
12:48.144 --> 12:51.868
[SPEAKER_04]: But you talk to anyone that's been there long enough, they recognize the talking points.
12:52.963 --> 12:54.184
[SPEAKER_04]: And those guys will level with you.
12:54.544 --> 12:55.764
[SPEAKER_04]: They'll let you know, yeah, sure.
12:55.824 --> 13:00.226
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe the first time around, we enlisted out of a sense of patriotism or duty.
13:00.786 --> 13:06.329
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of the times, when people re-up or re-enlist and keep coming back, it's not for the mission.
13:07.169 --> 13:21.215
[SPEAKER_04]: It's for the friends and family members that have been forged out of this shared experience, you know, you have to spend so much time away from your actual families that you kind of end up creating a new nuclear one on deployment.
13:22.155 --> 13:29.123
[SPEAKER_04]: So I have to imagine, on something as tight quarters as a submarine, that those crews are incredibly tight knit.
13:29.223 --> 13:34.229
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I can barely handle a stent of three or four days with my extended family over the holidays.
13:34.389 --> 13:43.059
[SPEAKER_04]: So I imagine on something like that, the crew kind of almost becomes an extension of the submarine, like it's working just as well as every other mechanical part of that vessel.
13:43.459 --> 13:51.888
[SPEAKER_04]: which is why if we time travel back to the Cold War and bounce back to Russia, it must have felt pretty unusual, pretty unnerving.
13:52.188 --> 14:02.399
[SPEAKER_04]: To go back to your submarine, knowing it hadn't undergone the normal maintenance, but then you're also not seeing the faces the people you usually serve with, and are instead looking at members of the KGB.
14:03.360 --> 14:14.916
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, the K129 is a submarine so surrounded by folklore, conspiracy theories, and even has a place in Hollywood history as the focal point of the hunt for Ed October.
14:15.657 --> 14:19.603
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom Clancy's first novel in the first ever mention of his character, Jack Ryan.
14:20.493 --> 14:33.583
[SPEAKER_04]: There's this long-running rumor that Tom Clancy might have had ties to the CIA or that the CIA might have encouraged some of his themes as a way to ease the public and to stories that sounded insane, but maybe weren't so far from the truth.
14:34.244 --> 14:41.049
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, what if we got an author to write fiction that mirrors real missions just enough that when people hear rumors, they confuse them with the book?
14:41.589 --> 14:50.698
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, weirdly, one of Alec Baldwin's first lines to Sean Connery in the movie The Hunt for Out of October is, I'm not an agent, I just write books for the CIA.
14:51.679 --> 14:57.044
[SPEAKER_04]: Before Clancy ever shopped The Hunt for Out of October, he sent the manuscript to the U.S. Navy as a courtesy.
14:58.005 --> 15:06.773
[SPEAKER_04]: The Navy bought it outright, deleted a hundred pages, and then gave it back to him with a note that basically said, you can publish this version.
15:09.887 --> 15:17.168
[SPEAKER_04]: Killin' and I know that we're not experts when it comes to any of this, which is why we sat down with historian, comedian, and host of the podcast, HILF.
15:17.648 --> 15:20.249
[SPEAKER_04]: History, I'd like to fuck, Don Brody.
15:20.629 --> 15:27.690
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, I think among the reasons I love the Cold War is because it's so not love the Cold War qualified, because I love to fuck history.
15:27.710 --> 15:30.411
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like war makes me go home.
15:30.651 --> 15:39.072
[SPEAKER_03]: The Cold War in general is because of how many parallels there are to the people, the individuals, and the broad strokes that are reminiscent of personal relationships.
15:39.252 --> 15:41.313
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, even just the way it's described, you know what I mean?
15:41.333 --> 15:41.634
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
15:41.734 --> 15:51.601
[SPEAKER_03]: Because like, the end of World War II was so victorious, especially like from an American point of view, it was like, we didn't even get that hurt at home.
15:51.941 --> 15:56.924
[SPEAKER_03]: The vast majority of our pain was happened really far away without great photos.
15:56.944 --> 15:59.686
[SPEAKER_03]: And even the photos we saw were like, God, we look so good.
15:59.706 --> 16:00.387
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
16:00.907 --> 16:02.668
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, look at our pictures.
16:02.868 --> 16:05.170
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like amazing, you know?
16:06.353 --> 16:07.653
[SPEAKER_03]: Not to say there wasn't any enormous.
16:07.713 --> 16:14.475
[SPEAKER_03]: But the pain in the loss was also this economic rebound that paralleled it and the kissing in the streets and like women and wow, I was great.
16:15.355 --> 16:27.718
[SPEAKER_03]: And the citizen soldiers who were not military before just like got and came home and then had this like vastly improved economic position and didn't have to deal with war again.
16:29.178 --> 16:33.499
[SPEAKER_03]: And like we grabbed hands with the Chinese and we grabbed hands with the Russians and we just,
16:34.219 --> 16:40.793
[SPEAKER_03]: We did it, we did it, we did it, we did it and just like how long it took to be like
16:44.252 --> 16:49.735
[SPEAKER_03]: What are we doing over here?
16:49.795 --> 16:56.898
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like how also it had to be done on the backdrop of like we world we're one in world we're two we're so close together.
16:57.258 --> 17:01.480
[SPEAKER_03]: So like we absolutely can't convince even the people who want to go back in back in.
17:01.560 --> 17:07.062
[SPEAKER_03]: So the atmosphere of like friendly we're definitely don't want to go to war again.
17:07.082 --> 17:08.003
[SPEAKER_03]: We are poised.
17:08.723 --> 17:12.506
[SPEAKER_03]: entirely for the next war, which in some ways would be helpful if it happened.
17:12.786 --> 17:18.590
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that complex and, like, kind of sounds reminiscent of what we're moving through right now.
17:18.730 --> 17:20.691
[SPEAKER_03]: It is, isn't it?
17:21.191 --> 17:23.133
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I mean, it really is hotter.
17:23.713 --> 17:24.033
[UNKNOWN]: Exactly.
17:24.434 --> 17:29.657
[SPEAKER_03]: So, to that extent, I guess, I think we're still in it.
17:29.677 --> 17:30.878
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think the Cold War ever ended.
17:30.978 --> 17:31.979
[SPEAKER_03]: I totally agree with you.
17:32.019 --> 17:33.820
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the myth was when the wall came down.
17:35.882 --> 17:39.923
[SPEAKER_04]: It was the height of the Cold War and weirdly, things weren't that different from today.
17:40.584 --> 17:42.204
[SPEAKER_04]: Russia versus the US.
17:42.804 --> 17:46.346
[SPEAKER_04]: Threads that weren't technically Threads warnings that weren't technically warnings.
17:46.926 --> 17:52.248
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone insisting that they don't want escalation while doing things that feel very escalation adjacent.
17:53.068 --> 17:54.128
[SPEAKER_04]: Sounds familiar.
17:55.129 --> 18:00.290
[SPEAKER_04]: In the 1960s, Americans were worried about nuclear missiles today, its cyber attacks, disinformation,
18:02.970 --> 18:08.793
[SPEAKER_04]: Which is just really the modern day version of I'm not touching you while hovering your finger and inch away from someone's face.
18:10.433 --> 18:20.098
[SPEAKER_04]: Shortly after midnight on February 28th, the K-129's desolange and fired off and headed towards what Russians called the Lonelyest Place on Earth, Petro Publosc.
18:20.858 --> 18:25.300
[SPEAKER_04]: It's literally the most volcanic place on the planet.
18:25.400 --> 18:29.342
[SPEAKER_04]: 26 active volcanoes just constantly throwing ash and steam into the air.
18:29.953 --> 18:35.858
[SPEAKER_04]: They have to navigate through three rocks, cut through icy water, before they can finally submerge into the Pacific.
18:36.459 --> 18:41.063
[SPEAKER_04]: And once they're heading south, the K-129 sends a quick check-in burst to Moscow.
18:41.543 --> 18:43.405
[SPEAKER_04]: Basically, I wore good text.
18:44.225 --> 18:50.571
[SPEAKER_04]: After that, as when traditionally Vladimir would finally be able to open a sealed orders and actually find out what his mission was.
18:51.118 --> 18:57.782
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a lot of theories about what happened to the K-129, and yet some of them go full on conspiracy mode.
18:58.263 --> 19:12.412
[SPEAKER_04]: Many believe that the extra KGB officers on board had their own secret orders to take control of this up and launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. Three men who called the same country home, pointing guns at your head.
19:13.513 --> 19:19.637
[SPEAKER_04]: All of your fellow sailors are locked up in the next room hearing these commands being shouted at you from behind a steel door.
19:20.362 --> 19:32.226
[SPEAKER_04]: This wasn't a movie, there was no Jack Ryan, no option to defect, and now Captain First Rank Vladimir Kospar was the only one in possession of the launch codes and being forced to launch a nuclear attack on American soil.
19:33.227 --> 19:45.071
[SPEAKER_04]: The KGB officers relentlessly keep screaming, enter the codes, enter the codes, enter the codes, and he did, he entered the code, but not the code to launch.
19:50.550 --> 19:59.898
[SPEAKER_04]: small explosions detonated every hatch blew open and the submarine plummeted to the bottom of the Pacific before the change of pressure could detonate any of the warheads.
20:01.019 --> 20:02.440
[SPEAKER_04]: The K-129 was gone.
20:04.101 --> 20:07.524
[SPEAKER_04]: It and all its men drifted to the bottom of the Pacific.
20:08.996 --> 20:12.379
[SPEAKER_04]: with the sub in silent mode before missing its last communication relay.
20:13.119 --> 20:21.506
[SPEAKER_04]: Russia was left completely in the dark and they began scrambling planes, constantly patrolling the waters where they believed the K-129 should have been.
20:22.747 --> 20:24.989
[SPEAKER_04]: Clancy understood something that the K-129 Prove was true.
20:27.151 --> 20:29.233
[SPEAKER_04]: The scariest part of the Cold War wasn't what we knew.
20:30.014 --> 20:30.775
[SPEAKER_04]: It was what we didn't.
20:31.596 --> 20:40.447
[SPEAKER_04]: The fact that the K-129 sank in 1968, and it didn't become public knowledge until years later, that's not a failure of history, that was the design.
20:41.767 --> 20:44.048
[SPEAKER_04]: And once that curtain was pulled back, even just a little.
20:44.969 --> 20:49.172
[SPEAKER_04]: It changed how you thought about power, secrecy, and the story's government's tell.
20:49.332 --> 20:56.776
[SPEAKER_04]: So when people say Tom Clancy's books feel too detailed or too realistic, that's why he wasn't predicting the future.
20:57.577 --> 20:59.038
[SPEAKER_04]: He was paying attention to the past.
20:59.969 --> 21:07.775
[SPEAKER_04]: K129 showed that the real world already sounded like a thriller, we just weren't supposed to hear about it, and that's kind of the unsettling takeaway.
21:08.796 --> 21:14.880
[SPEAKER_04]: Not that Tom Clancy exaggerated, but that if anything, he might have been toning it down.
21:16.041 --> 21:19.384
[SPEAKER_04]: The uncomfortable truth is that we don't actually know what happened.
21:20.613 --> 21:22.073
[SPEAKER_04]: What we do know for sure is this.
21:22.833 --> 21:27.094
[SPEAKER_04]: On March 11, 1968, 40 degrees north latitude off the coast of Hawaii.
21:27.814 --> 21:29.855
[SPEAKER_04]: The K-129 was lost.
21:30.995 --> 21:38.677
[SPEAKER_04]: And whatever happened, it happened fast, sending the entire sub, its men, and its nuclear arsenal to the bottom of the Pacific.
21:39.277 --> 21:42.177
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably so fast that the crew didn't even have time to process it.
21:43.998 --> 21:46.738
[SPEAKER_04]: Cubs are would never returned to his wife in his two kids.
21:51.008 --> 22:00.470
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, his family would not be made aware that anything was even wrong until an appalling six months later, when the families were finally notified that the men on board were presumed dead.
22:01.410 --> 22:07.791
[SPEAKER_04]: A phrase used intentionally by Moscow that meant Vladimir's family would never receive the military pension that he was owed.
22:08.491 --> 22:12.612
[SPEAKER_04]: He would receive the same pension as a soldier who accidentally fell and hit his head.
22:13.872 --> 22:20.053
[SPEAKER_04]: The whole of 722, once a homoway from home, a promise of a better future to Vladimir and his family.
22:21.350 --> 22:26.095
[SPEAKER_04]: was now as tombstone, 15,000 feet at the bottom of the ocean.
22:27.456 --> 22:40.930
[SPEAKER_04]: The US and Russia would continue to tensly tiptoe through its cold war, but when that submarine and the fate of its men hit the bottom of the Pacific, we were listening.
22:48.077 --> 22:50.079
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, thanks for listening to this week's episode.
22:50.320 --> 22:55.165
[SPEAKER_04]: Be sure to follow and listen along to our amazing guest Don Brody on her podcast HILF.
22:55.786 --> 23:02.113
[SPEAKER_04]: This series is hosted by myself Hunter Hill, my sister Kaelan Hill, and is a nothing to see here production.
23:02.873 --> 23:06.017
[SPEAKER_04]: Executively produced by Hunter Hill, Kaelan Hill, Ed dosick.
23:06.297 --> 23:08.458
[SPEAKER_04]: and produced by Jess Sonnemfeld-Jallis.
23:08.678 --> 23:17.501
[SPEAKER_04]: Video interviews were produced by Kita Mascarrow, and if you're enjoying the show, please be sure to follow the podcast, leave us a review, and subscribe wherever you are listening.
23:17.641 --> 23:21.463
[SPEAKER_04]: It really does make a huge difference, and helps other people discover the story.
23:21.803 --> 23:29.986
[SPEAKER_04]: You can also join our sub-stack community for exclusive content, including source documents, extended celebrity interviews behind the scenes updates, and much more.
23:30.266 --> 23:38.848
[SPEAKER_04]: and one last thing, every episode that will be coming out as either been recorded in my tiny home office or running and running it while out on the road.
23:39.208 --> 23:44.550
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you so much for being here as my sister and I unravel this crazy story.
23:44.690 --> 23:48.171
[SPEAKER_04]: Hope to see you next week as we dive even deeper into this secret.
