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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, wasn't the stuff to blow your Mind?

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christie Sager. Robert,

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Speaker 1: did you ever see uh this movie from the nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighties starring John Travolta called The Experts. I have not know,

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Speaker 1: so my memory of this movie is John Travolta and

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Speaker 1: his co star whose name I can't remember, our nightclub

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Speaker 1: managers in like New York or something like that, and

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Speaker 1: they think they're going to Nebraska, but they end up

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Speaker 1: going to Soviet Russia, Uh, to a fake town that

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Speaker 1: is built there solely by the KGB to like make

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Speaker 1: like a spies like the Americans, like Americans, where they

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Speaker 1: blend in perfectly and exactly. They're Russian agents who are

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Speaker 1: trained to understand American culture. And Uh. Anyways, those guys,

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Speaker 1: John Travolta and his pal end up teaching them about

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Speaker 1: all the great things about American culture. They love it

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Speaker 1: so much that they turn against Soviet Russia. Anyways. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of a proto American, it is, very much so.

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Speaker 1: So I couldn't help thinking about that movie The Experts

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Speaker 1: the entire time. I was researching for today's episode, which

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Speaker 1: is about a little place. It's actually not so little,

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Speaker 1: it's surprisingly so and it's in Soviet but it's not

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Speaker 1: no longer in Soviet Russia. It's in Siberia. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: it's called Akademgorodok, I believe, is how you pronounce it,

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Speaker 1: which translates from Russian into academy town. Yeah, you can.

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Speaker 1: All you can really think of it as the Russian

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Speaker 1: Hogwarts for science. Yeah, yeah, you mentioned that earlier, and

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Speaker 1: I think that that is like the perfect analogy. It

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Speaker 1: is where Russia sent all of its smartest wizards to train. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it's been around since the late fifties. And so

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Speaker 1: basically we discovered this through an article that was in

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Speaker 1: The Guardian that was really well written. Uh. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of just like a biopic thing about it. And I said,

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Speaker 1: let's do let's do an episode about this thing. It

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Speaker 1: just sounds so weird and perfect for the show. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's great, it's weird, it's fascinating. And the thing that

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Speaker 1: really surprised me is that I could not find any

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Speaker 1: examples of fiction or even creepy pasta that takes place

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Speaker 1: here like this seems like the perfect setting for all

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Speaker 1: manner of weird paranormal, creepy science, mad science shenanigans, especially

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Speaker 1: like you know, you mentioned Creepy Pasta. We we did

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Speaker 1: an episode in the last year at least about that

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Speaker 1: creepy pasta Russian science experiment, and then we you know,

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Speaker 1: we've done episodes recently about the space Mirror project with

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Speaker 1: project as in Maya and also the human z episode.

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Speaker 1: Russian Science too academic garodoc didn't come up in any

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Speaker 1: of these things, no, um, So it's kind of fascinating,

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Speaker 1: especially because this place seems to be like the place

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Speaker 1: for Russian science. Yeah, and I mean not only like

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Speaker 1: mad science e stuff, but like spies, like why hasn't

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Speaker 1: James Bond run through the streets of uh So, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's keep that in mind. And hey, Hollywood producers, if

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Speaker 1: you're out there listening, I don't know, it's a little

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Speaker 1: late for like some Cold war mad science shenanigans, but

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe that movie, oh that was sent

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Speaker 1: in World War two, Frankenstein's Army. Did you ever see that? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Frankenstein's Army is a lot of fun. It's essentially haunted

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Speaker 1: attraction as a film, like it's not if you go

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Speaker 1: into it with that that mindset and realize you're not

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Speaker 1: watching like a true like character engagement film, but you're

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Speaker 1: going on a haunted house, right Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: For the listeners, franknin Stein's Army Josh Clark from Stuff

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Speaker 1: You Should Know, turn me onto that. Uh uh Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's basically Frankenstein creates a bunch a bunch of like

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Speaker 1: zombie monsters for the Nazis as they like pour through

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Speaker 1: Russia or is it the other way around? Is the

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Speaker 1: Russian ones? I can't remember, but it's it's basically set

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Speaker 1: during the invasion of Russia. Yeah, I believe that's right. Okay, anyways,

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Speaker 1: go watch that, guys. I think it's on Netflix. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So let's get down to basics about what this place is.

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Speaker 1: It is hidden away in the cold Siberian forest, and

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Speaker 1: it's actually been called Russia's Silicon Forest as an alternative

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Speaker 1: to Silicon Valley. Uh. It's located three thousand kilometers east

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Speaker 1: of Moscow. And the weather they are ranges from thirty

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Speaker 1: degree celsius summers to negative forty degrees celsius winters. So

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Speaker 1: it's like all over the place like brutal cold, and

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Speaker 1: then like apparently like there's like a real mosquito issue

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Speaker 1: in the summers, Like it's it's hot, and there's just

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Speaker 1: mosquitoes everywhere. It's right on alongside what's called the I

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Speaker 1: believe it's ob river. Anybody out there who knows Russian

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Speaker 1: or has like a familiarity with Russian, I apologize in advance.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna butcher a number of things here. And the

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Speaker 1: only way that I was able to figure out how

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Speaker 1: to pronounce Akademgorodok and Novas Abersk was by watching a

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Speaker 1: YouTube video by a dude who is American that just

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Speaker 1: happens to live in Nova Sabirsk and teaches Russian to

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Speaker 1: people over YouTube. And speaking of Siberia here, I mean

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Speaker 1: anyone who doesn't have that have much familiarity with Russia.

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Speaker 1: You might be thinking of Siberia. You're thinking like waste lands,

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Speaker 1: thinking like tiny camps, and maybe you're imagining this strange

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Speaker 1: artificial place in the forest there and and not that

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Speaker 1: that part. Maybe he isn't completely off, but it is

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Speaker 1: worth stressing that Nova Sabirsk is a major metropolitan area. Yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: like that was a mistake I made. I would say

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Speaker 1: like through the first half of the literature. I didn't

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Speaker 1: quite have that understanding until like I ran across the

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Speaker 1: statistic that Nova Sabirsk is the third largest most populated

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Speaker 1: city in Russia after Moscow and St. St. Petersburg. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's Siberia, but it's not the middle of nowhere. It's

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Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty populated. And Academgorodoc is like Koters

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Speaker 1: just outside of Nova Sabirsk, and it's it's like it's

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Speaker 1: his own little end to tea, but it's connected. Yeah. Uh,

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Speaker 1: in fact, it's kind of I guess, like the best analogies,

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Speaker 1: it's sort of like Cambridge to Boston, right, Like Cambridge

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Speaker 1: is often used as a as a like analogy for

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Speaker 1: academic Gara doc because of you know, Harvard and m

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Speaker 1: I tear there. But in academic Garads case, it's uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, the state universities and then now like a

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Speaker 1: lot of science and tech oriented companies are moving there.

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Speaker 1: So okay, novas abers was founded in eight so even

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Speaker 1: the city itself isn't that old, especially for European city. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this kind of falls on the long standing Russian trend

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Speaker 1: of this is the place we will build a city

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Speaker 1: regardless of it's uh, you know, Siberia or a swampy wasteland. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel that way about Atlanta where we live,

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Speaker 1: Like I'm like, why why did anybody start like set

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Speaker 1: up roots here? And it was I think in Atlanta's case,

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Speaker 1: it was just it just happened to be where trained, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: where the trains, right. Yeah. Um. So by the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: Novas of Beersk itself had already like garnered a reputation

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Speaker 1: as like having several educational institutes very focused on physics. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and it it really didn't like the academic Gora doc

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Speaker 1: experiment didn't really come about until the late fifties. And

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Speaker 1: the way I like to think about it is kind

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Speaker 1: of like if our listeners are familiar with the TV

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Speaker 1: show Eureka. I think it's a little bit like that,

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Speaker 1: although less science fiction e and then um, some of

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Speaker 1: our listeners actually turned Joe and I on. I don't

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Speaker 1: think you've listened to it yet, right, Limetown, I know

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Speaker 1: I've heard mention of it. So Limetown is a podcast,

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Speaker 1: uh that is about a fictional American science town kind

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Speaker 1: of like this that I highly recommend Anyways, those were

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Speaker 1: in my head as well as John Travolta's classic The

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Speaker 1: Experts while we were studying this place. And it's also

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Speaker 1: worth pointing out through the realization of Gora doc Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's all a part two of the seven Year Plan

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Speaker 1: from A fifty to sixty five, which was a big

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Speaker 1: initiative in Soviet Russia. Yeah, so what we're looking at

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Speaker 1: here is basically a team up between a mathematician named

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Speaker 1: Mikhail Lavrentiev and uh, everybody's favorite premier Nikita Krushchev, and

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Speaker 1: their idea was basically, they're going to take the USSR

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Speaker 1: smartest scientists and put them all in one place so

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't be distracted by Moscow. Like apparently both the

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Speaker 1: like you know, metropolitan nature of Moscow, but also all

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Speaker 1: the politics going on in Moscow was becoming a problem

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Speaker 1: for these scientists. They weren't getting their work done. So Sai,

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Speaker 1: let's send them off from the middle of nowhere. This

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Speaker 1: Novis appears, that's perfect, we'll build something right us side there.

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Speaker 1: Thats all you have to do is distance yourself from

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Speaker 1: the politicians and they'll leave you alone. Right. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: in fact it happened, but then it turned against too.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, and we'll get into some of the the

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Speaker 1: the the ups and downs. That's what you progress here.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, you know, if you're a scientist and you're

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Speaker 1: in Russia in the fifties, and this is actually pretty

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Speaker 1: attractive to you because one you've got the freedom, but

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Speaker 1: also you have like large, spacious quarters and everything super

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Speaker 1: cheap and apparently even today, like it's relatively cheap. Like

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Speaker 1: I'm the this this guy that I'm talking about from

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Speaker 1: the YouTube video. He he was saying, you can rent

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Speaker 1: like a huge spacious apartment in Nova Saverisk nowadays for

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Speaker 1: like five U s. Dollars a month or something like that.

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Speaker 1: Um so he recommended going to visit there. And in fact,

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Speaker 1: didn't you say, like you you looked at trip advisor

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Speaker 1: to get some information. Yeah, yeah, trip advisors. Trip Advisor

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Speaker 1: was a great way to sort of give up to

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Speaker 1: get an idea of what what kind of offerings are

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Speaker 1: in the area. You know, like you can head on

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Speaker 1: over to to Nova Saverisk, can go to the zoo,

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Speaker 1: you can go to the awesome zoo. Yeah, like like

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Speaker 1: it the way it was written about in that Guardian article.

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Speaker 1: I thought, oh, this is just like this city in

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Speaker 1: the middle of nothing, but actually, like there's there's a

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Speaker 1: lot going on there, you know, it's it's relatively metropolitan.

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Speaker 1: And even that, they were saying, Um, there's a service

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Speaker 1: that's not Amazon, but it's like Amazon in Russia now,

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Speaker 1: where you you know, get next day delivery or two

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Speaker 1: day delivery on like basically anything you want to order, right,

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Speaker 1: So any DVD that you couldn't find in a local

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Speaker 1: shop or something like that, or stream you can get.

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Speaker 1: You know, this isn't it's not that isolated. So uh.

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Speaker 1: The other things that were there was they built an

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Speaker 1: artificial beach to try to make it more attractive. And

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Speaker 1: I actually saw pictures I was I was looking for

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Speaker 1: pictures for this episode, and there are pictures of from

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Speaker 1: the sixties of Russian women just hanging out on this

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Speaker 1: fake beach. So they just dumped a lot of stand

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Speaker 1: on the water. I don't know. I don't know how

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Speaker 1: they put it together. Um that was that wasn't in

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Speaker 1: any of the research, but I would imagine given the

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Speaker 1: feats that these people were performing with science, that making

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Speaker 1: a fake beach was like pretty easy comparatively. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: so the and and they also this is interesting the

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Speaker 1: whole design of it was set up to preserve the

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Speaker 1: natural environment of Siberia. So that's fascinating too, right, I

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Speaker 1: mean you're considering the fifties like they were thinking ecologically

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Speaker 1: back then too when they're setting this up. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: it's worth noting that the original plans called for what

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Speaker 1: for what is called wedding cake style Stalinist architecture. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And the word the Russian for that is Zuker Baker

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Speaker 1: steel and uh. At any rate, luck that would have

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Speaker 1: been you know, a lot more boxy communist looking buildings

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Speaker 1: and less of a reliance on trees that got scrapped,

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Speaker 1: and they ended up going with this uh this uh,

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Speaker 1: this more natural look, or at least it's more natural

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Speaker 1: when you when you factorate all the trees and mean, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the um, we'll talk about it later. But there's like

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Speaker 1: a main building there now that has been built recently

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Speaker 1: for the sort of modern day version of this place. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And it's this kind of fascinating architecture style. I have

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Speaker 1: to say, like, after doing all the research, I was

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Speaker 1: kind of like, this seems like it would be a

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Speaker 1: fun place to go in vacation. Like it may be

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Speaker 1: that's something only the people who host science podcasts think

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Speaker 1: when they read about this, it's the building your thing?

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Speaker 1: Is this the one that looks like an upside down you? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty crazy. Yeah, it's just this. The whole area

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Speaker 1: just seems sort of fascinating and um and like it

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Speaker 1: would be fun. But you know, I'm also not the

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Speaker 1: type of person who goes to the beach on vacation,

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Speaker 1: even if it's an artificial beach. And in terms of

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Speaker 1: getting actual institutes in there, I want to point out

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Speaker 1: that Mikhael Labyrintev's Institute of hydro Dynamics was the first

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Speaker 1: to really become operational, uh intim Cora doc. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: as we'll talk about later, like there's basically like any

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Speaker 1: university type situation, there's little silos all over this place,

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Speaker 1: and there's like little institutes there. I say little, they're

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Speaker 1: not little, but there's probably like I don't know, ten,

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Speaker 1: maybe twelve of them, um that just have all the

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Speaker 1: different disciplines that were studied there. And it's it's intense

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Speaker 1: when you think about like how much was all being

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Speaker 1: focused on in this different area and still is now.

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Speaker 1: It took them ten years to actually build the Center

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Speaker 1: of academic Gara doc. But it was essentially built with

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Speaker 1: the idea being that it would be a campus for

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Speaker 1: Nova SEVERERSK State University. Okay, and here's the answer to that.

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Speaker 1: It's fourteen institutes, not twelve. Uh that and they were

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Speaker 1: all set up as part of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Now,

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Speaker 1: at its height, there were sixty five thousand scientists there.

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Speaker 1: Uh Now that I would imagine the height would be

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Speaker 1: the mid sixties given what we've read. Um, although it's

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Speaker 1: getting back up there again now, it's not as much

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Speaker 1: of a public institution anymore. It's a combination of public

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Speaker 1: and private enterprise. In terms of the amount of money

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Speaker 1: spent on building this up initially, a nineteen two article

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Speaker 1: from Lauren g Lytton published in the Bulletin of Atomic

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Speaker 1: Scientists put it around two hundred million roubles or two

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Speaker 1: million dollars in bucks. I saw some figures that said like,

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Speaker 1: over the years, the combination of money that went in

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Speaker 1: there was close to a billion um that they just

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Speaker 1: they really wanted to make this thing work, and they

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Speaker 1: just pumped a lot of them. Yeah, a lot of

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Speaker 1: the money is going in from the state and then

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Speaker 1: initially eventually they get to the point where there's actually

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Speaker 1: some money coming in from industrial ventures as well. So, um,

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Speaker 1: Mikhail Lavrentev, who we've mentioned, who sort of like the

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Speaker 1: father of this place. He was important to cybernetics and

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Speaker 1: genetics that was like his field of study, but he's

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Speaker 1: mainly known as a mathematician. Now this is important before

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Speaker 1: we go forward. At the time, genetics was considered a pseudoscience,

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Speaker 1: especially in Moscow. I don't mean genetics like worldwide. I

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Speaker 1: mean like in terms of the Russian science community. It

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Speaker 1: was kind of looked down upon, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: the genetics studies, especially those that went on with Foxes

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Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about, which was my favorite

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Speaker 1: study that came out of this place, Uh, would not

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Speaker 1: have happened if it was in Moscower anywhere where the

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Speaker 1: Communist Party in particular would have been aware of what

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Speaker 1: it was up to. So this was also a nice

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Speaker 1: way for him to sort of um hide some studies,

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Speaker 1: and it allowed a certain amount of freedom for these scientists.

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Speaker 1: And also my understanding is that like it was almost

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Speaker 1: like a touring destination for artists and what they were.

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Speaker 1: They actually referred to them as bards coming through the town,

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Speaker 1: who would you know, give performances or uh do poetry

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Speaker 1: slams Like it sounds like I'm joking with the way

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Speaker 1: they described it. They weren't called poetry slams. That they

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Speaker 1: were like poetry readings at like local coffee houses and

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Speaker 1: in academic guard dog So very much in line with

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Speaker 1: some of the Silicon Valley as stuff that we hear

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Speaker 1: about or you know, imagine some of you actually experienced

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Speaker 1: with your serial stations and your your your meditation workshops

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Speaker 1: coming through through the workplace totally. And so this was

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Speaker 1: like this place where all like Russian creatives could sort

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Speaker 1: of like flow through and distribute their ideas to the

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Speaker 1: scientific community they air uh without fear of repercussions. And

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Speaker 1: one last thing before we go into the problems with

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Speaker 1: this place when things started to fall apart, is the

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Speaker 1: logo is super cool? Yeah. Um, so that the logo

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Speaker 1: they came up with. The idea was that it was

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Speaker 1: the Greek letter sigma and it was emblazoned on top

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Speaker 1: of a shock wave UH. And the design thinking here

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Speaker 1: was basically that it would suggest the synergy of a

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Speaker 1: broad range of disciplines uh while bringing a quote flash

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Speaker 1: of lightning to the area. It's a pretty good logo.

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Speaker 1: I have to admit, Yeah, it's cool. I wonder if

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Speaker 1: you like, there's probably like a collector's market for like

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Speaker 1: old Russian academic Gara doc like lapel buttons or something

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Speaker 1: like that. I should hope so, But then again, you

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Speaker 1: can get them on eBay. Yeah, may it would look

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Speaker 1: great on a T shirt. So if it's not already

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Speaker 1: on one of these, you know, the millions of T

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Speaker 1: shirt websites out serious needs to be so that that

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Speaker 1: article that I mentioned earlier by um loreng G. Lighton

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Speaker 1: and the Bolton of Atomic Science, it's from seventy two.

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Speaker 1: The title on that is another view of a cat

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Speaker 1: Imgora doc. Yeah. It was sort of like a response piece, right,

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Speaker 1: because there was one that had been previously published like

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Speaker 1: a year earlier in the same journal that was fairly

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Speaker 1: critical I think, right, well, yeah, and this to a

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Speaker 1: certain extent maybe not being critical enough, like kind of

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Speaker 1: not not really dealing with the kind of the nuts

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Speaker 1: and bolts, so they think we're coming together. My understanding

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Speaker 1: was it was sort of like h Western scientists trying

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Speaker 1: to come to grips with what this might mean. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this is and this ends up being I like

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Speaker 1: this paper because it's a little more like I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's certainly not demonizing and saying, oh this is evil

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Speaker 1: Soviet science town, but it's but it's laying out just

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Speaker 1: some of the basic logistical problems and human problems of

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Speaker 1: trying to build what is sometimes referred to as a

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Speaker 1: science utopia. And everybody knows what happens when you're trying

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Speaker 1: to build a utopia. It falls apart because of dystopia. Right.

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Speaker 1: If science fiction has taught us anything it's that we'll

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Speaker 1: never have a perfect world. And I mean, at the

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Speaker 1: very least, like this was often held up as being

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Speaker 1: sort of an unlimited funds, unlimited talent, unlimited opportunity for

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Speaker 1: scientific inquiry. And of course, anytime someone is trying to

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Speaker 1: sell you something that is unlimited, uh, you know, there

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Speaker 1: are limits. It might be that might be an all

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Speaker 1: you can eat see food buffet, but there is a

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Speaker 1: finite amount of steamer tray shrimp you can eat. There's

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Speaker 1: only so much. Yeah, so you know what I'm already thinking,

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Speaker 1: Like we've we've talked about this on the show many

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Speaker 1: times before, Like all of our ideas for AMC dramas

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Speaker 1: historical period pieces that come up throughout the show. So

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Speaker 1: we've we've already talked about how there should be one

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Speaker 1: that's sort of about like the the science psychedelic set

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Speaker 1: of like um, Timothy Leary, et cetera, those those types

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Speaker 1: of folk. There should be like an AMC type mad

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Speaker 1: Men show that's set an academic Guara doc in the

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Speaker 1: big sixties. That would be That would be fantastic, would

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Speaker 1: be good, especially especially taking in some of these details

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Speaker 1: that come from that light and article. And specifically she

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Speaker 1: interviewed one uh Ganadi Loveovich Paspalov, who was director of

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Speaker 1: the Institute of Geology and Geophysics and UM and so

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Speaker 1: he had a, you know, an insider view of how

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Speaker 1: things were coming together. And my understanding from the readings

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Speaker 1: was that that that institute, the GEL Geology and Geophysics

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Speaker 1: Institute in particular, was like one of the big successes

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Speaker 1: for this place in particular because it was the first

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Speaker 1: one to bring together all of the sub disciplines of

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Speaker 1: geology and geophysics into like one organization. But then also

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Speaker 1: like they uh somehow like came up with a new system.

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Speaker 1: It's in the notes, so we'll get there later, but

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Speaker 1: they came up with a new system for discovering oil,

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Speaker 1: and they found major oil plots in Siberia cool And

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Speaker 1: that's an example of things working the way you would

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Speaker 1: hope they would. You're bringing these these all these talented

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Speaker 1: individuals together. They're gonna have coffee at some point, They're

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Speaker 1: gonna go to the water cooler. You know, they're gonna

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Speaker 1: go to the Yeah, minds are gonna gonna come together,

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Speaker 1: and new ideas are gonna be generated. But as possible

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Speaker 1: Off pointed out, first of all, it was difficult to

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Speaker 1: get things off the ground and moving. After all, everything

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Speaker 1: was done from scratch here. There wasn't I think the

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Speaker 1: example that was mentioned in the article was that, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's one thing to build a factory. You know, you

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Speaker 1: know that that the components that have to come together,

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Speaker 1: you can put that together with relative ease. Because we've

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Speaker 1: been doing them for a while. This was something entirely new. Um.

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Speaker 1: And then they wound up with three types of scientists.

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Speaker 1: According to possible Law, three types of scientists that ended

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Speaker 1: up at caught him degoradac. The first was let's call

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Speaker 1: them idea men. The quote here is, on the one hand,

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Speaker 1: you've got the clever ones who give birth to new ideas,

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Speaker 1: each one more interesting than the other. But they expect

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Speaker 1: everything to be done right away and want it done

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Speaker 1: with a wave of the hand. And they're not known

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Speaker 1: for their persistence or their love of tedious labor, so

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Speaker 1: nothing comes from them. Okay, so you have those. This

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Speaker 1: already sounds like just any public university to me, but okay,

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Speaker 1: keep going. And then there they let's call them time servers,

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Speaker 1: he says, toilers who are not by God endowed. But

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Speaker 1: for all that, they are a stubborn lot, and you

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Speaker 1: just might get something out of them. Only they don't

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Speaker 1: have ideas. Familiar with this style of academic as well.

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Speaker 1: I call them turtles when I was working in academia.

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Speaker 1: And then there are the enthusiastic quote, those who are

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Speaker 1: neither clever nor toilers, but rather those characters who believe

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Speaker 1: mistakenly there and this is his by God endowed. But

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Speaker 1: don't you be in a hurry to dismiss them as ballast.

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Speaker 1: These people are quite often such enthusiasts for science that

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Speaker 1: you can't bring yourself to write them off as ballast. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So if this works out the same or worked out

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Speaker 1: the same way, that politics in you know, my experiences

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Speaker 1: with public universities. I'm sure it goes on in private

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Speaker 1: universities as well, But there's I imagine that these factions

399
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Speaker 1: sort of broke off, right, and there's like they're like

400
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Speaker 1: ven diagrams. Is a little bit of overlap, it's a

401
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Speaker 1: little bit of cooperation, but there's also like a lot

402
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Speaker 1: of infighting for power and expertise and uh small sticks. Yeah, yeah,

403
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Speaker 1: I think so, um and and and and also you

404
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Speaker 1: just have a lot of individualists here and occasional outright

405
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Speaker 1: prima donnas, and they're all arriving with preconceived notions about

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Speaker 1: how things are gonna go down in this science wonderland, right,

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Speaker 1: But then reality hits, projects have to be adjusted, People

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Speaker 1: were shuffled around, people were pulled between larger projects and

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Speaker 1: their own private ventures. And it was also difficult. You know,

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Speaker 1: It's one thing to say or we can bring all

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Speaker 1: the best minds together, but even in communist Russia, even

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Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union, is difficult to lure everyone to Siberia.

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Speaker 1: So many were turned off by the harsh climate, or

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Speaker 1: they're unwilling to leave their own institutes where they already

415
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Speaker 1: had their own ventures. You know, up and running perhaps too,

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Speaker 1: you know, to the degree that they were perfectly happy

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Speaker 1: with um. Also money, despite the idea of unlimited funds

418
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Speaker 1: for science stificate achievement, here there were money problems. So

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Speaker 1: you had Moscow the politicians essentially holding the purse strings here,

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Speaker 1: and so they're scrutinizing everything. So the the hot and

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Speaker 1: cold running science funds tap definitely had some eyes on it,

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Speaker 1: and this became a major problem for this area, both

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Speaker 1: in the seventies and then again in the early nineties

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Speaker 1: with the collapse of the U s SR. So you

425
00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 1: can run, you can distance yourself from the political head,

426
00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:32,720
Speaker 1: from from the politicians, from the those who who who

427
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:36,480
Speaker 1: who guard the purse strings, but you're not going to

428
00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:39,000
Speaker 1: escape them completely, especially if you're sucking this kind of

429
00:23:39,040 --> 00:23:43,119
Speaker 1: money down. Also the problem of two worlds here, so

430
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:47,960
Speaker 1: you had science over humanities. You had complex specialization rather

431
00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:50,639
Speaker 1: than the sort of free form idea jazz that one

432
00:23:50,720 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 1: might dream of at least in every situation. I mean

433
00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:55,639
Speaker 1: example we mentioned earlier, that's an example of things working

434
00:23:56,080 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 1: more or less the way they should, but you're not

435
00:23:57,600 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 1: always going to get that. Yeah, that definitely seemed to

436
00:23:59,880 --> 00:24:03,080
Speaker 1: be like my take on it when I was reading

437
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:05,120
Speaker 1: about the history, was that, you know, other than these

438
00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:08,800
Speaker 1: like traveling bards and you know, poets and writers and

439
00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:13,920
Speaker 1: uh occasional filmmakers. Andre Tarkovsky. Yeah is that am I

440
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:16,280
Speaker 1: saying his name right? I believe that's right. Yeah, he

441
00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:18,200
Speaker 1: he went through there as well and give a talk.

442
00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 1: But um, other than those folks didn't really have any

443
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 1: liberal arts, right like, whereas like you know, my familiarity

444
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: with places like Georgia Tech which is down the street

445
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:29,880
Speaker 1: from US or m I T they do have at

446
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 1: least like some small programs that offer liberal arts. So

447
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a balance. And it's not

448
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:38,680
Speaker 1: all empirical, yeah, I mean, like even in Georgia Tech here,

449
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:44,080
Speaker 1: there are definitely areas of their their their technological involvement

450
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: that spill over into liberal arts their music and technology. Yeah, absolutely. Um.

451
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:54,680
Speaker 1: And finally, uh, the practical applications of findings still trumped

452
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:58,399
Speaker 1: and perhaps still trump the purity of scientific inquiry. So

453
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:01,560
Speaker 1: there were clashes that were altered between Moscow and it's

454
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:07,480
Speaker 1: party ideals as well as the the individualism and elitism

455
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:10,000
Speaker 1: at Acadam Gora Docks. So you would have these individuals

456
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 1: that definitely had their pet projects, perhaps such as genetics,

457
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:16,639
Speaker 1: you know, something that is not as accepted. But meanwhile,

458
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:19,679
Speaker 1: the voices from Moscow are saying, all right, that's well

459
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 1: and good, but this, this is the thing we need, right,

460
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:24,359
Speaker 1: this is why we brought everyone together. They probably wanted

461
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:27,080
Speaker 1: them to be focusing on things like UH. I would

462
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:32,240
Speaker 1: imagine like militaristic endeavors or space program stuff, things like that. Um.

463
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:35,680
Speaker 1: In fact, I believe it was originally meant for military

464
00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: defense projects, and the founders were they the founders were

465
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,199
Speaker 1: able to convince the government to give non military research

466
00:25:42,280 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: the highest priority. Even more surprising that we didn't hear

467
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:47,680
Speaker 1: about this when we researched projects in Maya because it

468
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 1: seems like it's like a perfect fit for what they're doing.

469
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: UM so yeah, so this like what Robert's talking about

470
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: with this UH. Clash between Moscow's ideals and the individualism

471
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: rising up in academic Rodoc resulted in a period of

472
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 1: time there that is referred to now as the brain dream,

473
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 1: and this was in the nineteen seventies. The Bresh era

474
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:14,119
Speaker 1: of Russia curtailed the freedoms of these scientists and then

475
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:17,720
Speaker 1: turned the science there more towards working on the military

476
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 1: and the economy. All right, so this is where kind

477
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: of the sad. Yeah, what happened was there's a group

478
00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 1: of scientists who, you know, let's imagine that they are

479
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:30,520
Speaker 1: in our television show. This group of scientists hangs out

480
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:33,439
Speaker 1: the coffeehouse. They watched the Traveling Bards coming through, They

481
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: listened to their big ideas, they talk about them amongst themselves,

482
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:40,159
Speaker 1: and then they said, you know what, we don't like

483
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:42,879
Speaker 1: the fact that there's a secret political trials held here

484
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:45,920
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. Let's write something called the letter

485
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:48,200
Speaker 1: of forty six. And I think that meant it was

486
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: forty six of these scientists. Uh. They basically wrote it

487
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:53,920
Speaker 1: to the Communist Party in Moscow and said that they're

488
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 1: standing against this stuff and they didn't like it. So

489
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: that didn't go over too well, and the Communist Party

490
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:04,439
Speaker 1: turned around and both had a campaign to re educate

491
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 1: the staff there. Uh. And this basically ended the period

492
00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 1: of time that was referred to as the Thaw, which

493
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:14,240
Speaker 1: was sort of like the cold we I think that

494
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:16,680
Speaker 1: comes from us, probably more from them, but the thaw

495
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:19,880
Speaker 1: being that it was like less of a cold, frigid

496
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:25,480
Speaker 1: communist uh. You know, cold war type environment. Right, alright,

497
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:28,359
Speaker 1: so no more jazz, you're playing classical music. I think

498
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: the Bard's got bumped out. Yeah. Uh. And they were

499
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:37,040
Speaker 1: informed specifically that one they were not an island of freedom,

500
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 1: and two they were forced to publicly recant the letter.

501
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 1: So if they wanted to keep their jobs or they

502
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:45,680
Speaker 1: didn't want to get like, you know, sent off to

503
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 1: their own secret trial, they had to basically stand up

504
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: and say, oh, it was wrong. I shouldn't have done that.

505
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back to my research. Then jump

506
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:57,399
Speaker 1: forward twenty years, right, so there's like the steady decline

507
00:27:58,119 --> 00:28:01,400
Speaker 1: h during the brain drain, where more and more scientists

508
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:04,359
Speaker 1: start leaving academic garadoc over this time. Right, They're just

509
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 1: like there, all all the utopian ideas that were presented

510
00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: to them didn't come through. Right. So you put this

511
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:16,240
Speaker 1: huge sort of industrial science town that's got like the

512
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 1: best equipment. Uh, it's designed for the best people, but

513
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 1: the people are leaving in droves. Uh. And so what

514
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:25,680
Speaker 1: ends up happening we get to the nineteen nineties is

515
00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:29,359
Speaker 1: practically abandoned by then anyways, and then the Soviet Union

516
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:33,679
Speaker 1: collapsed and pretty much everybody who is there left uh

517
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:36,760
Speaker 1: and and went back to the West. Now there's a

518
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 1: particular example of this that we're going to talk about

519
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 1: when we get into the science there, and it's the

520
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: fox is one that I want to focus on. Uh.

521
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 1: It's a really kind of heart wrenching story about like

522
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 1: the research, all the work that went into the research there,

523
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 1: and then how it sort of faded out and the

524
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: repercussions that it had for the people, but also for

525
00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: like the test subjects, which were like all these foxes

526
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:02,720
Speaker 1: that they were working with. Anyways, But I think before

527
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 1: we get into that study, let's let's finish off the history.

528
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: Let's get to present day. What is going on there now?

529
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: So Vladimir Putin comes along. He goes to India ten

530
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: years ago so I think it was two thousand five,

531
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: so eleven years ago, and he sees how tech savvy

532
00:29:22,760 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 1: India is, and he says, well, Russia's got to have

533
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 1: this too. How about he comes back and he says,

534
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: how about we mix federal and private money together and

535
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 1: we pump it back into academ goadoc uh, and this

536
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,360
Speaker 1: will be like our new cradle of innovation. Okay, And

537
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: it's not the only one, Like I don't want to

538
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: make this sound like this is the only place in

539
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: Russia where like innovation is going on. From from my understanding,

540
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 1: there's at least three other major science tech complex centers

541
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 1: that Putin has given funding to around Russia, but this

542
00:29:55,120 --> 00:29:57,479
Speaker 1: one is the one with the like the big long history.

543
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 1: It's kind of a point of pride, right m hm.

544
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 1: So much so that there's actually road signs as you

545
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: enter going into the science park. Now that's say the

546
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 1: brain drain is prohibited. I think we should have that

547
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 1: sign everywhere. That's just a good indicator that you know,

548
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:16,320
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna be squashing your ideas and there are no

549
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: elithids around to um your mind mind flares better known

550
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:23,440
Speaker 1: as mind flares there. They will just totally destroy a

551
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: scientific TLEs right up your nose and suck your brains out. Yeah,

552
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: that's what the brain drain is all about. Uh, the

553
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,920
Speaker 1: secret history of academic Garadoc. Now we're just going off

554
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 1: on a D and D tangent. Okay, the fiction and

555
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: the creepy postive basically rights. Yeah it does. Um so yeah,

556
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: so so Putin puts more and more money into this place.

557
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 1: Uh oh, this is where I got the one billion

558
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 1: from I'm sorry, So the one billion I was talking

559
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 1: about earlier, that's present day, Like it's received up to

560
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:56,680
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in the last ten years. Uh. And

561
00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 1: today Mikhail Lavrentiev's Ranson actually works there and oversees the

562
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:06,400
Speaker 1: repurposing of the whole place. Uh. And the interesting thing

563
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: is there's an interview with him and he says that

564
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: he thinks that his grandfather would appreciate the new academ

565
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 1: Gueradoc and he would quote want business to pay for

566
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:20,959
Speaker 1: using our brains. So this is fascinating like Russian ideological

567
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: shift that you can just trace throughout the history of

568
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 1: this one town, right, like from communist ideals to sort

569
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 1: of uh, like this countercultural sixties vibe, to back into

570
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: like an economic depression, and then now it's bouncing out

571
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: and it's like embracing capitalism and it's like, oh, yeah,

572
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 1: we're smart, but you gotta pay us to be smart.

573
00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: So now it's based around these buildings that Robert and

574
00:31:48,360 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: I were talking talking about, the translates into technology park,

575
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:56,160
Speaker 1: but his academ park. Uh, it's this fourteen story basically

576
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: it's a monument. It's he's conjoining twin towers and they

577
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:01,880
Speaker 1: they stand up. Yeah, like you said, it's like an

578
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:05,280
Speaker 1: upside down w kind of right, like like they stand

579
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:07,440
Speaker 1: up at a tilt and come together, and then there's

580
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:09,959
Speaker 1: like walkways at the very top between them that are

581
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 1: also at like an angle. It's really interesting, definitely, Like

582
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: do Google in image search for academic Garadoc and that

583
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:18,239
Speaker 1: that will be like the first thing that comes up.

584
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 1: This this building. Apparently it was designed by architects that

585
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: are from novis a beersk and uh. The the whole

586
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 1: idea is basically this association of major companies that established

587
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: themselves in the area, sort of like your local chamber

588
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 1: of commerce. I guess they called themselves the CIG Academic Innovation. Well,

589
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:40,840
Speaker 1: on the occasion of Putin visiting in two thousand five

590
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:44,040
Speaker 1: for this sort of startup venture, they said, well, here's

591
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 1: our here's our new wonderful building, and it has four

592
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: clusters of studies that go on there. There's instrument engineering,

593
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: information technologies, biomedical studies, nanotechnology and then oh sorry, and

594
00:32:56,120 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 1: then nanotechnologies and new materials. That's that's one uh. As

595
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 1: often there was a total of two hundred and sixty

596
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 1: three companies there. That's in academ Park. That's not Academic

597
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: Garadoc itself, which still has these institutes running. But there's

598
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: so you've got this mix now. It's sort of it

599
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: reminds me actually of the building that we work in, right, Like,

600
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 1: so we work in this building. Yeah, I couldn't help

601
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 1: but think about old PCM Pont City Market a little bit.

602
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: Reading about this for those of you out there who

603
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: are unfamiliar how stuff works. Our studios are in a

604
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 1: building in Atlantic called Pont City Market that. Uh, this

605
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:35,040
Speaker 1: used to be like a Sears factory, uh in Atlanta,

606
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 1: like way back in the day, like what sixty seventy

607
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 1: years ago, Yeah, like a Sears like mega center. Yeah,

608
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: and they would basically like there was a railroad line

609
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: that came up to our building and they would transfer

610
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 1: goods in and out of the building. Uh. And then

611
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:51,360
Speaker 1: over time it was taken over by the City of Atlanta.

612
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: It was like a part of City Hall for a

613
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: long time. Yeah, Like city Hall occupied a portion of

614
00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: it and then the rest was just like empty waste land,

615
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: you know. Building it was kind of just a big

616
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:05,320
Speaker 1: industrial shell. And that's what it was when I first

617
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: moved here, just this huge monument of kind of just

618
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 1: like public falling apart. Uh And and then in the

619
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:15,759
Speaker 1: last what three or four years, it was bought by

620
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:21,840
Speaker 1: developers and repurposed into this like mixed use office slash

621
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 1: retail space that's also got this kind of like vibe

622
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: of like there's a lot of of like tech companies here,

623
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:33,840
Speaker 1: like yeah, ourselves, twitters here, uh, male Chimp. You know,

624
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:36,719
Speaker 1: love love big name companies. I mean, it's one about

625
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,560
Speaker 1: making money, yeah, but you end up bringing in all

626
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 1: these various companies and it kind of becomes an incubation center.

627
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:46,439
Speaker 1: That was maybe like the part that I was able

628
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:48,919
Speaker 1: to sort of like empathize the most most with reading

629
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: about Academic guardoc was one of the key features of Atlanta.

630
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,000
Speaker 1: I feel like is Atlanta does a really good job

631
00:34:56,520 --> 00:35:00,320
Speaker 1: of repurposing things from its past h to try to

632
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 1: like make new use out of them for like its

633
00:35:03,719 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 1: present day identity. Um, whether it's like old houses that

634
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:10,880
Speaker 1: get turned into like hip new restaurants or like art

635
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 1: galleries like I drum like places like that. Um, Atlanta

636
00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 1: is just full of stuff like that. So reading about this,

637
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,000
Speaker 1: it kind of made me think, Oh, they're sort of

638
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 1: operating into that same theory. Right, yeah, yeah, definitely. All right,

639
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:23,719
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break and when we come back,

640
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:25,799
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about some of the scientific research that's

641
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:37,200
Speaker 1: taken place at Akata and Goredoc over the years. So, uh,

642
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:40,480
Speaker 1: even before Academic GUARDAC was founded, like I said, like it,

643
00:35:40,800 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 1: you know, novas a Beers had this reputation for um

644
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 1: physicists in particular, but it had a lot of educational facilities.

645
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 1: It also attracted weird scientists. And the example that we're

646
00:35:52,600 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 1: gonna give today, it's a guy named Yuri Kondratyuk. I

647
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,759
Speaker 1: think that's how you pronounced his name. Now, Uri was

648
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 1: only in town for a couple of years. But this story,

649
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:06,279
Speaker 1: oh it's good, it's good, so it's worth putting in here. Uh.

650
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 1: He only was there for a couple of years, basically

651
00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:12,839
Speaker 1: because he had previously attempted to escape Russia. He didn't

652
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:15,240
Speaker 1: want to have anything to do with with communist Russia,

653
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:18,800
Speaker 1: but he couldn't get out. Uh, And so he found

654
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: a student who had died of tuberculosis and he appropriated

655
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: his name. He's putting on a Don Draper here or

656
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 1: talented Mr Ripley. Yeah. Uh, and so he's taken on

657
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:33,400
Speaker 1: this new name, and he moves to Nova Sabirsk, and

658
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:36,719
Speaker 1: he just so happened to have also published his own book.

659
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:39,080
Speaker 1: He had already written this book years before, but he

660
00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:41,400
Speaker 1: published it when he got to Neva Sabirsk. It's called

661
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: and this is a good title for a book, man,

662
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:50,280
Speaker 1: the Conquest of Interplanetary Space. And basically he proposed groundbreaking

663
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: ideas that were later put into scientific practice. Here, so

664
00:36:54,480 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 1: things like space stations, oxygen hydrogen, mixed fuel, using solar energy,

665
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 1: shielding space vehicles, and then in particular using gravity to

666
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,320
Speaker 1: map out spacecraft trajectories. All of this stuff was just

667
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 1: in his this this this random guy's book. Uh. And

668
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:15,759
Speaker 1: he also, you know, this isn't just like some some

669
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:17,800
Speaker 1: crazy guy who had ramblings in a book, like he

670
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:20,800
Speaker 1: actually was had practical applications for the science he was

671
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: talking about. I wonder which of the if he fell

672
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,400
Speaker 1: into one of the three categories we mentioned with he

673
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,279
Speaker 1: like a big idea guy was like, we're gonna, we're gonna,

674
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 1: we're gonna have solar power, we're gonna have oxygen, hydrogen fuel.

675
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:33,799
Speaker 1: But then didn't like you figure it out, You figure

676
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:35,799
Speaker 1: the details out and get let's do it tomorrow. That's

677
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 1: what it seemed like from reading about the book. But

678
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 1: then this project of his struck me as like, oh,

679
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: this guy actually got a thing done. Uh. He designed

680
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: a thirteen thousand ton wooden grain silo that he called

681
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: the Mastodon. Yeah, we've got like so many awesome metal

682
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 1: band names popping up in this episode, right, the Mastodon

683
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:57,120
Speaker 1: is already a band, but like academ Garadoc would be

684
00:37:57,160 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 1: a great like the Key Oh yeah, we're a metal

685
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: ba and up. What does that mean Academy Town, Well,

686
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:06,359
Speaker 1: you may. I'm wondering if there's not one already out there,

687
00:38:06,400 --> 00:38:08,320
Speaker 1: because in the past when we said this would be

688
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 1: a great metal band, there has been a metal band.

689
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: Like it is a metal band and it's pretty good.

690
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 1: Recommend everyone to check him out. So this masted on

691
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: thing that he built, the thing about it that's pretty fascinating.

692
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:22,799
Speaker 1: He didn't use a single nail for it. The whole

693
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 1: thing was like, you know, it was one of these

694
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: structures that locked together. Uh. And so subsequently he was

695
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:34,920
Speaker 1: later arrested and convicted be Subsequently, he was later arrested

696
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:39,440
Speaker 1: and convicted of counter revolutionary activities because there were no

697
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:42,800
Speaker 1: nails in the silo. They thought that he was purposely

698
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 1: trying to sabotage the structure so that it would fall apart.

699
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:48,520
Speaker 1: And he had just come up with like this unique

700
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: new way. And the reason why it was because nails

701
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:52,759
Speaker 1: were hard to come by at the time, Like they

702
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:55,279
Speaker 1: didn't you know do out in Siberia. Wasn't that easy

703
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 1: to get a hold. You're limiting the need for for

704
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 1: iron and metals a construction of a building. It makes sense.

705
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: So when he was trying to conserve and bring about

706
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: new ideas, they saw it as counter revolutionary. So, hey,

707
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:09,120
Speaker 1: this guy, you know, he was trying to get out

708
00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: of there anyways, and no matter what he could do,

709
00:39:11,080 --> 00:39:13,879
Speaker 1: he was he was destined to get into trouble. Uh.

710
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 1: But you know, basically even before uh you know, all

711
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're about to talk about, academic Gordoc

712
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 1: was set up to work on everything from nuclear physics,

713
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:29,880
Speaker 1: the theoretical genetics, and like we said, the space program

714
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: and weapons platforms. Uh. So we're gonna go through we'll

715
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,320
Speaker 1: talk about some of the institutes. Uh and you know

716
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:39,400
Speaker 1: some of them are sexier than others. Uh, So we

717
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:41,800
Speaker 1: won't you know, I'm I don't think it like necessarily

718
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 1: we need to go through every single study that came

719
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:47,040
Speaker 1: out of them. But my favorite study is the fox

720
00:39:47,160 --> 00:39:50,279
Speaker 1: one that came out of the Cytology and Genetics Institute

721
00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:55,600
Speaker 1: where they bred foxes for fifty generations to be more

722
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:59,719
Speaker 1: like dogs. Oh yes, yes, this is a famous study. Yeah.

723
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,279
Speaker 1: And if you if you look this up. The young

724
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:05,719
Speaker 1: woman who at least in two thousand twelve, she was

725
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:08,839
Speaker 1: sort of like the poster child for this research. Her

726
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 1: name is Arena. Oh man, I'm gonna get this name wrong,

727
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:19,320
Speaker 1: Arena Mukhema the Sina she uh is you know, basically

728
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,680
Speaker 1: like trying to train these foxes so that they will

729
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 1: respond to commands, obedience commands and wow, Like she was

730
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 1: really popular with European and even Japanese media for a

731
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:37,279
Speaker 1: while because she's very photogenic. She's this very beautiful young

732
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 1: Russian woman with long, curly red hair, and she's it's

733
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 1: it's everything like you would imagine when you're thinking about like, oh,

734
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 1: like a female Russian scientist working with foxes, right, Like

735
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 1: she's got like red hair that matches the coats of

736
00:40:51,719 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 1: the foxes that she's working with, and there's all these

737
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 1: pictures of her like playing with the foxes in the snow,

738
00:40:56,800 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 1: or cuddling up with the foxes or whatever, like working

739
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,320
Speaker 1: with them on their sitting posture. That's interesting because I

740
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:05,400
Speaker 1: cannot I can't help but imagine it also plays into

741
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:10,440
Speaker 1: Asian supernatural fox motifs, both in Japan but also in

742
00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 1: the more Asian portions of Russia. But yeah, I mean

743
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 1: to your point, Like, apparently every article I read about

744
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:20,880
Speaker 1: this uh said that there was a Japanese media company

745
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:24,400
Speaker 1: that flew out to Nova Sabirsk and filmed with her

746
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: for sile days. So like, clearly this was a story

747
00:41:27,560 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 1: that caught like the imagination and attention of a lot

748
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: of people, including myself. Now, the origin story behind these

749
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:38,400
Speaker 1: foxes goes like this. There's a biologist named Dmitri Billejev,

750
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:42,399
Speaker 1: and he gathered a hundred and thirty foxes from fur

751
00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:45,920
Speaker 1: farms all around the academ Gara doc Nova Sabirsk area

752
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 1: in the early sixties, and he bred them using only

753
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:53,840
Speaker 1: the least aggressive ones from each generation, basically trying to

754
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: recreate the process within which how wolves became dogs. Now,

755
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:03,720
Speaker 1: by doing so, he professed to compress thousands of years

756
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: of process into just a few decades now that the

757
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:09,760
Speaker 1: idea here was he didn't want them to be pets. Okay,

758
00:42:10,360 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 1: he was hoping to test a theory that and this

759
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:16,880
Speaker 1: is interesting, I've never heard of this before, that domesticated

760
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:20,839
Speaker 1: animals are actually physically altered over the course of their

761
00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:24,840
Speaker 1: domestication through their contact with human beings, and they undergo

762
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:29,120
Speaker 1: biological changes to be more appealing to us. So in

763
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:32,280
Speaker 1: the example that he gave with wolves to dogs, floppy

764
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:36,640
Speaker 1: ears and curlier tales. Now in the case of the foxes, Uh,

765
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 1: my understanding was that like yesday, like I've adopted things

766
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:43,719
Speaker 1: like wagging their tails. Uh. And they also they lick hands. Uh.

767
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 1: And they apparently this this breed of foxes that she's

768
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:53,160
Speaker 1: working with today have like white patches on their heads

769
00:42:53,280 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: and that's not necessarily like normal for this particular species

770
00:42:57,040 --> 00:43:02,799
Speaker 1: of fox. So the idea here is what's called domestication phenotype,

771
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 1: making animals more appealing to man. Now, remember what I

772
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:09,680
Speaker 1: said about genetics, right, Like, this was like a big

773
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 1: no no with the Soviets, So he hid what he

774
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:14,880
Speaker 1: was doing from the authorities because they would have disapproved

775
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:18,319
Speaker 1: of it. Uh. And the foxes did physically change. They

776
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 1: found that they had less cortisol, which is a stress

777
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:25,359
Speaker 1: hormone in their blood, and they didn't feel discomfort when

778
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:27,719
Speaker 1: they were with people. Right, Like if I just walked

779
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 1: up to a fox in the forest, now, well, first

780
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 1: of all, it would run away from me or bite me, right,

781
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 1: but like I couldn't just like cuddle with it, like

782
00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: pick it up and hold it like my dog, and

783
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 1: it would be you know, it would love being pet

784
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,279
Speaker 1: or anything like that. They had bred all of that

785
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:44,399
Speaker 1: out of these foxes, but these foxes were just kind

786
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 1: of sitting there, especially since the brain drain. So we

787
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:50,279
Speaker 1: get to the nineteen nineties when pretty much everyone has

788
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:53,800
Speaker 1: left this area, right, and there's concerned they don't have

789
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: any money. How are they going to feed all these

790
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 1: foxes that they've got. So they actually started selling some

791
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 1: of them. They sold a few of them to fur breeders.

792
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: But they pressured them and they said, look, please don't

793
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 1: make them suffer the stress of captivity, because these particular foxes,

794
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 1: you know, they don't that we've read them in such

795
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 1: a way that they don't have like the defense mechanisms

796
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:20,239
Speaker 1: of psychological mechanisms to deal with this. Go easy on them, now,

797
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: who knows if that actually happened or not. But they

798
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:24,760
Speaker 1: also sold a couple of them as pets around the area,

799
00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:28,120
Speaker 1: So some people in this area have foxes as pets.

800
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:33,320
Speaker 1: Along comes Arena And she's twenty two years old in

801
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:36,920
Speaker 1: two thousand twelves, so she's probably twenty six now, uh,

802
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:40,719
Speaker 1: and she's training these foxes to be obedient. She got

803
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:43,800
Speaker 1: the idea when she noticed that this special breed was

804
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: seeking human attention, the ones that were left. So she

805
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 1: had actually trained dogs all through her teens and she

806
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:52,560
Speaker 1: had been doing it professionally, but she was a student

807
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:53,840
Speaker 1: there and she said, you know what I want to

808
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 1: I want to take a go of this. So her

809
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:59,160
Speaker 1: advisor said, all right, take these two young baby foxes,

810
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:02,520
Speaker 1: and she named them Anna and Elma, and she trained

811
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: them the way that you would train dogs. So she

812
00:45:04,239 --> 00:45:06,719
Speaker 1: started with food motivation to get them to respond to

813
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:10,040
Speaker 1: basic commands. Then she changed that up once she got

814
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:14,319
Speaker 1: them there, to game motivation to connect with their other instincts. Uh.

815
00:45:15,160 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: As the story goes, she can make her foxes stand up, sit,

816
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:21,279
Speaker 1: lie down, they recognize their names, they come when they're called,

817
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:25,759
Speaker 1: things like that. Uh. But she stated afterwards, she was like,

818
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 1: I made a couple of mistakes, like, they're not they're

819
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:31,120
Speaker 1: not dogs, So I made some mistakes by doing it

820
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:33,360
Speaker 1: the way that you would with dogs because their psychology

821
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 1: is totally different. So she says that she's going to

822
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 1: do it again. She changed her training tactics, but she did. Sorry,

823
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: it wasn't her. Her advisor described these foxes as quote

824
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 1: as devoted as dogs, but as independent as cats. So

825
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:51,640
Speaker 1: they have a different psychology, but apparently they are able

826
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: to be like domesticated sort of partners to man. Interesting.

827
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 1: All right, so that's one of the more noteworthy examples hero.

828
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 1: But what are some of the other UH institutes. Well,

829
00:46:02,239 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 1: they had an institute, well they still do, of thermal

830
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:07,400
Speaker 1: physics that was founded with the rest of the area

831
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:10,360
Speaker 1: UM and yeah, it was one of the first institutes

832
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:13,360
Speaker 1: that specialized in the subject. Today, you know, it studies

833
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:17,440
Speaker 1: things like heat exchange and physical hydro and gas dynamics. UH.

834
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:20,520
Speaker 1: They're known, ironically because of the shock wave logo. They're

835
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: known for their shock wave propagation effects studies in gases

836
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:28,440
Speaker 1: UH and also focused on ecologically clean power. There's the

837
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 1: Boodker Institute of Nuclear Physics. This is uh an an

838
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:38,719
Speaker 1: institute that's particularly um good at working on particle accelerators.

839
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 1: In fact, they contributed toward the construction of CERN's large

840
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:45,560
Speaker 1: hadron collider and provided equipment to it. They also had

841
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 1: a tool I love the name of this, called the

842
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:53,080
Speaker 1: Siberian Snake, that they used to avoid depolarization of beams

843
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:55,760
Speaker 1: of spinning electrons or protons. I don't know what that means,

844
00:46:55,920 --> 00:47:00,880
Speaker 1: but I like the Siberian's nickname. There's so the Institute

845
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: of Automation and Electrometry, UH, the Institute of Geology and

846
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:08,360
Speaker 1: Geophysics that I mentioned earlier, which you know sort of

847
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:11,360
Speaker 1: made a name for themselves by discovering major oil and

848
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: gas rich areas. UH. There's an Institute of Theoretical and

849
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:19,560
Speaker 1: Applied Mathematics, and they in particular focus on like aero

850
00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:23,600
Speaker 1: dynamic flows, and they have like an experimental facility where

851
00:47:23,640 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: they can test these parameters on aircraft models. UH. And

852
00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:30,720
Speaker 1: then they have institutes that are also dedicated to semiconductor physics,

853
00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:35,399
Speaker 1: laser physics, chemical kinetics, combustion, as well as the two

854
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:39,080
Speaker 1: that are named after Mikhail Kavrentiev, which is their Institute

855
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 1: of Hydrodynamics which you mentioned earlier, and their School of

856
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 1: physics and mathematics, so they've got something for everybody there.

857
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 1: It seems like except for the bards, there's there's there'sn't

858
00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:51,560
Speaker 1: there'sn't a lot of poetry there anymore, I would imagine.

859
00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:57,880
Speaker 1: So nowadays we've got Putin's Initiative in there, there's a

860
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:01,960
Speaker 1: lot of entrepreneurs moving in. There's around three hundred companies

861
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: working on tech and science in the area, and it's

862
00:48:05,200 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: set up in particular to provide infrastructure so these companies

863
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:11,799
Speaker 1: don't have to buy their own equipment, right, so it's like, uh,

864
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 1: sort of like a cooperative. They they provide the equipment,

865
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:17,560
Speaker 1: you know, they provide the facilities, and they make it

866
00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: attractive for these companies to come in and start up

867
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:23,200
Speaker 1: and and uh work on science and tech. And these

868
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 1: companies specialize in things like I T pharmaceuticals, metallurgy, fossil fuels.

869
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:31,239
Speaker 1: One of the like interesting kind of factoids that came

870
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:32,840
Speaker 1: out of a bunch of the magazines was that the

871
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:36,359
Speaker 1: the I T company that works on Oprah Winfrey's web

872
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 1: portal is based out of there, uh and apparently like

873
00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:41,920
Speaker 1: they didn't even know who Oprah Winfrey was when they

874
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:43,680
Speaker 1: were working on it. And then they said, but we

875
00:48:43,760 --> 00:48:46,759
Speaker 1: do now. So that's my that's my Russian impersonation for

876
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:50,400
Speaker 1: the episode. So yeah, Russia's got two hundred thousand science

877
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 1: and tech specialists who are graduating every year, and this

878
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 1: is like a very nice new option for these young professionals.

879
00:48:57,200 --> 00:48:58,920
Speaker 1: And for a lot of the same reasons that we

880
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:01,839
Speaker 1: heard about back in the late fifties early sixties. Right,

881
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:05,719
Speaker 1: it's cheap. Everything is supposedly one fifth of the cost

882
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:09,359
Speaker 1: of Western prices. It's easy to focus in one person,

883
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:11,880
Speaker 1: they asked that. He said, yeah, because it's so cold,

884
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:17,239
Speaker 1: there's literally nothing for us to do but work. So yeah,

885
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: so we've got this big place now that it's contributing

886
00:49:21,160 --> 00:49:24,040
Speaker 1: to the science and tech sort of high mind of

887
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 1: the world right now. And it has you know, even

888
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: like a version of Starbucks. It's called Travelers Coffee. It's

889
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: their their Russian version of Starbucks. Because the cold and

890
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: harsh environmental not enough to make you work. You need

891
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:42,480
Speaker 1: a little caffeine. Uh. And it has been officially inducted

892
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,320
Speaker 1: into the Guinness Book of World Records as the smartest

893
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: street in the world. The academician Lavrentiev prospect as a

894
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: two point five kilometer stretch that has more than twenty

895
00:49:54,680 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 1: scientific research institutes there. So academ Garadac your new destination,

896
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:05,920
Speaker 1: uh for vacation. From my understanding is you probably don't

897
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:08,200
Speaker 1: want to go in the winter though. Yeah, yeah, definitely not.

898
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 1: And hey, if you do happen to go there. There

899
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:15,320
Speaker 1: is one really interesting monument in the area and it

900
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:19,320
Speaker 1: is the Monument of Laboratory Laboratory Mice. And it's actually

901
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:22,480
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really quite cute. Um. I love the statue.

902
00:50:22,600 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 1: It's like a little mouse man with he's wearing spectacles

903
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:29,719
Speaker 1: and he has like a cloak and he's it looks

904
00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:31,800
Speaker 1: like he's sewing, but what he's sewing as a DNA.

905
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:34,800
Speaker 1: He licks knitting it together and with his knitting needles.

906
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:38,919
Speaker 1: And according to exactly how those mice contributed, Yeah, they didn't.

907
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:40,760
Speaker 1: They didn't just get sprayed in the eyes of chemicals

908
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 1: grown in the dustbin. Yeah, it's very much. You know,

909
00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: there's some a certain amount of artistic liberty techn place here.

910
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:49,600
Speaker 1: And the the artist in question, Andrew Cobrech, this is

911
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: his statement on it, uh. Quote. It combines the images

912
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:55,319
Speaker 1: of the laboratory mouse and a scientist because they are

913
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:58,280
Speaker 1: related to each other and serve as one case mouse

914
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 1: is captured in a moment of scientific to discovery. If

915
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:02,880
Speaker 1: you look into her eyes, you can see that this

916
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:05,759
Speaker 1: little mouse has come up with something. But the whole

917
00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 1: symphony of scientific discovery, joy Eureka has not yet begun

918
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 1: to sound. So even more reason to visit. I think, uh,

919
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:16,400
Speaker 1: and we hope we presented to you this sort of

920
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:20,799
Speaker 1: fascinating little niche area. I I thought it was really

921
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 1: worth digging into, and I'm glad we found out more

922
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 1: about it, especially because the whole Fox program. Oh yeah,

923
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:29,000
Speaker 1: but hey out there, if you've got more about this

924
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 1: that you know about, like maybe you've visited already, or

925
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:34,880
Speaker 1: or maybe you speak Russian and you want to correct

926
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:39,400
Speaker 1: us on our pronunciations, let us know. Uh. There's plenty

927
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:40,879
Speaker 1: of ways to reach out to us. You can talk

928
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:44,839
Speaker 1: to us on Facebook, you can talk to us on Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram.

929
00:51:45,120 --> 00:51:48,319
Speaker 1: We're on all of those as Blow the Mind. We've

930
00:51:48,360 --> 00:51:51,480
Speaker 1: also got our home base, right Robert, that's right Acceptable

931
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:53,400
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the

932
00:51:53,400 --> 00:51:55,880
Speaker 1: podcast episodes. You'll find videos, blog post links out to

933
00:51:55,920 --> 00:51:58,160
Speaker 1: those social media accounts and more. And if you want

934
00:51:58,200 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 1: to write to us directly. You want to tell us

935
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 1: how badly you want to move to academ Garrido and

936
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:08,280
Speaker 1: start AMC's new TV show set in sixties all around

937
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 1: their science Park. Hit us up at Blow the Mind

938
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. Well more on this

939
00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:26,399
Speaker 1: in thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works

940
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:26,839
Speaker 1: dot com