"Five Minutes of Fire": Kerouac, Sputnik, Chou En-Lai

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