Ep.10 - Wilson in Outer Space
Takeaways:
- In this episode, we explore the intriguing connections between individuals named Wilson and space exploration.
- The podcast highlights the astonishing journey of astronaut Stephanie Wilson, who has participated in numerous NASA missions.
- We delve into the fascinating tale of the Wilson Crater on the Moon, named after three distinguished scientists.
- The episode also covers the remarkable story of the Wilson Harrington comet, which embodies the complexity of celestial objects.
- Listeners will learn about the transformation of Wilson, a small town in Florida, into a vital part of NASA's operations.
- Lastly, we emphasize the importance of sharing space exploration stories with younger audiences to inspire future generations.
Links to stories mentioned in the show:
- Wilson Sporting Goods introduced Launch Pad 2 irons and woods
- Willie Wilson Gas Give Away
- Steve Wilson Quintet - Jazz Music
- Stephen Wilson, Jr. - CMA Award
- The late Porter Wilson honored as the inventor of Flag Football
- Russell, Serena, & Tiger help start new Pro Flag Football League
- Women's Soccer star, Sophia Wilson, scores first goal back from maternity leave
- Quincy Wilson sets new 400m national record again
- Tony Wilson takes home the Pro Mod Ironman trophy in drag racing
- Washington Capitals honor NHL Hockey Player Tom Wilson for 900th game.
Today, we embark on a captivating journey beyond the confines of our terrestrial abode, as we delve into the realm of cosmic exploration, specifically focusing on the intriguing entities named Wilson that reside in the vast expanse of outer space. This episode elucidates the remarkable narratives of two individuals named Wilson who have made significant contributions to the field of space exploration, alongside a fascinating exploration of celestial locations bearing the name Wilson. Moreover, we shall examine a unique celestial object that defies conventional categorization, straddling the line between a comet and an asteroid, thereby expanding our understanding of these cosmic phenomena. As we traverse through the annals of space history, we will also underscore the significance of these discoveries in reshaping our comprehension of planetary formation and evolution. Ultimately, this episode serves to illuminate the profound connections between the name Wilson and the cosmos, emphasizing the remarkable interplay of human curiosity and the mysteries of the universe. Today, we embark on a captivating journey beyond the confines of our terrestrial abode, as we delve into the realm of cosmic exploration, specifically focusing on the intriguing entities named Wilson that reside in the vast expanse of outer space. This episode elucidates the remarkable narratives of two individuals named Wilson who have made significant contributions to the field of space exploration, alongside a fascinating exploration of celestial locations bearing the name Wilson. Moreover, we shall examine a unique celestial object that defies conventional categorization, straddling the line between a comet and an asteroid, thereby expanding our understanding of these cosmic phenomena. As we traverse through the annals of space history, we will also underscore the significance of these discoveries in reshaping our comprehension of planetary formation and evolution. Ultimately, this episode serves to illuminate the profound connections between the name Wilson and the cosmos, emphasizing the remarkable interplay of human curiosity and the mysteries of the universe.
00:00 - Untitled
00:00 - Journey to the Stars
04:59 - The Cosmic Chameleon: Mystery of Comet Wilson Harrington
07:50 - The Cosmic Chameleon: Unraveling the Mystery of Wilson Harrington
13:48 - The Legacy of Wilson Crater: Three Scientists, One Name
25:10 - The Journey of an Astronaut
29:46 - The Next Frontier: Artemis and Beyond
37:46 - The Next Space Adventurer: Russell Wilson
40:47 - The Mystery Astronaut: Russell Wilson's Journey
46:46 - The Rise of Digital Finance and Cybersecurity
Speaker A
Today we're trading the Earth for the stars as we track down Wilson's in the final frontier.
Speaker A
Three, two, one.
Speaker A
We have liftoff of the spacecraft Wilson to outer space.
Speaker A
Hi, folks.
Speaker A
Welcome to the Cuz Wilson show where we talk about people, places and things named Wilson.
Speaker A
This week's topics are all about Wilson's in outer space.
Speaker A
In this week's people category, you're going to learn about an amazing astronaut named Wilson.
Speaker A
And there's also a second person named Wilson in space.
Speaker A
This week in our places category, I've packed it with three different places.
Speaker A
Two in outer space and one bonus space here on Earth.
Speaker A
And in our things category, there is a thing named Wilson that doesn't obey the laws of outer space.
Speaker A
You're gonna love it.
Speaker A
And of course, we have Wilson's in the news and Wilson's in sports here on Earth.
Speaker B
And now it's time for the places category.
Speaker A
This week we're gonna have a lot of fun because I'm gonna build a Wilson sandwich.
Speaker A
That means I'm going to sandwich two places named Wilson with a thing right in the middle.
Speaker A
We'll start from the farthest away and we'll work towards Earth for our topic categories.
Speaker A
Our first place on the top of this sandwich isn't actually named Wilson, but I added it to this episode because number one, it's a solar system discovered by an astrophysicist named Wilson.
Speaker A
Number two, it's kind of like our Wilson fallow rope in episode number four.
Speaker A
It bends the laws of nature just a little bit.
Speaker A
And number three, the news of this discovery was just announced this year back in February of 2026.
Speaker A
Exploring this milky Way is much easier if you have a digital guide who can process a billion years of history in just a few seconds.
Speaker A
So I'm going to have Larry narrate this new arrival on the scene.
Speaker A
Take it away, Larry.
Speaker B
For a long time, we thought we had the recipe for building a solar system all figured out.
Speaker B
The recipe seemed pretty simple, right?
Speaker B
Small rocky planets get up close to their star, and then the huge gas giants form way out in the cold.
Speaker B
But what if that blueprint is wrong?
Speaker B
Well, a team led by Dr. Thomas Wilson from the University of Warwick found a system that totally flips the script around this red dwarf star.
Speaker B
They found this super weird, kinda sandwiched layout of planets.
Speaker B
And as Dr. Wilson said, you just don't expect a rocky planet on the outside of gas giants.
Speaker B
So what on Earth happened here?
Speaker B
The team had to play cosmic detective to figure it out.
Speaker B
First they checked if the planets got Knocked around or maybe suffered some kind of massive collision.
Speaker B
But nope.
Speaker B
Simulations showed the system was stable.
Speaker B
The real answer was in how it was bored.
Speaker B
This led them to a pretty wild new idea.
Speaker B
Inside out planet formation.
Speaker B
Okay, so here is the the inner planets form first, gobbling up all the nearby gas and dust.
Speaker B
Then over millions of years, most of the gas in that stellar nursery just disappears.
Speaker B
That final outermost planet.
Speaker B
Yeah, it was a late bloomer to the party.
Speaker B
By the time it started forming, the gas buffet was totally empty.
Speaker B
Only rocks were left.
Speaker B
So this late arrival grew up in a totally different environment than its older sibling planets.
Speaker B
This isn't just a weird one off, it's a clue that could rewrite the entire rulebook.
Speaker B
I mean, we've found over 6,000 exoplanets and we're learning they're all incredibly diverse.
Speaker B
As ESA researcher Isabel Rebolito puts it, these finds force us to look beyond our own cosmic neighborhood.
Speaker B
What we once thought was universal rule might just be a local suggestion.
Speaker B
It really makes you wonder, is our solar system actually the weird one?
Speaker A
Thanks again, Larry.
Speaker A
This solar system sits in the Lynx constellation.
Speaker A
Even though it is 116 light years away, you can actually see it at night with a regular set of binoculars and of course, a telescope.
Speaker A
It's famous for being one of the faintest constellations in the entire sky.
Speaker B
And now it's time for the things category.
Speaker A
Now we put in the center of our sandwich a thing named Wilson, and you get a two for one value.
Speaker A
Like a cheese sandwich with provolone and Swiss.
Speaker A
This thing named Wilson is both a comet and an asteroid.
Speaker A
And it's a whole lot closer to Earth.
Speaker A
It was named after the two astronomers, Wilson and Harrington.
Speaker A
But that's not the two for one value I was talking about.
Speaker A
Here's Larry again.
Speaker A
To deliver the flavor of an asteroid with the spice of a comet tail.
Speaker B
Alright, let's dive into a real cosmic cold case.
Speaker B
We're talking about a celestial object that basically spent decades living a double life.
Speaker B
I mean, it was discovered, then it got lost, and when it was found again, it was something completely different.
Speaker B
So can a comet really have a secret identity?
Speaker B
I know, it sounds like something straight out of a sci fi movie, right?
Speaker B
But that's the core of the mystery we're tackling today.
Speaker B
Can something just disappear and then show up again, totally transformed?
Speaker B
Well, the answer is complicated and honestly, pretty amazing.
Speaker B
Okay, so our story kicks off way back in the mid 20th century, deep in the astronomical archives.
Speaker B
This is where this cosmic chameleon first made an appearance.
Speaker B
So picture this.
Speaker B
It's November 19, 1949.
Speaker B
You've got astronomers at the legendary Palomar Observatory in California, and they're poring over these huge photographic plates of the night sky.
Speaker B
And right there, among all the familiar stars, they see it.
Speaker B
Something new, just a faint little smudge of light moving where it shouldn't be.
Speaker B
And here's the dead giveaway.
Speaker B
It had a tail.
Speaker B
You know, that faint hazy trail of gas and dust.
Speaker B
That's the classic, unmistakable sign of a comet.
Speaker B
So naturally, they classified it as a comet and gave it a name, Wilson Harrington, after the guys who found it.
Speaker B
And just like that, a new object was officially in the solar system's registry.
Speaker B
Or so everyone thought.
Speaker B
Okay, and this is where the mystery really starts to unfold.
Speaker B
See, the problem was they just didn't get enough pictures of it to lock down its orbit.
Speaker B
And if you don't know its exact path, you have no way of predicting what, where it's going to be next.
Speaker B
So, poof.
Speaker B
Just like that, Comet Wilson Harrington was gone.
Speaker B
It became, for all intents and purposes, a ghost in the records.
Speaker B
And for decades, that was it.
Speaker B
That's where the story ended.
Speaker B
It was just another lost comet, one of many that slipped through our fingers.
Speaker B
But let's fast forward a bit, because a new piece of the puzzle was about to drop into place.
Speaker B
Even though nobody recognized it for what it was at the time.
Speaker B
I mean, we're talking about 30 years.
Speaker B
An entire generation of astronomers came and went.
Speaker B
Comet Wilson Harrington.
Speaker B
It was just a forgotten footnote in some old logbook.
Speaker B
It really seemed like the solar system had just swallowed it whole.
Speaker B
Then, bam, it's 1979.
Speaker B
Astronomers spot something new again.
Speaker B
But this time, it's a small, totally unremarkable near Earth asteroid.
Speaker B
It was just a solid point of light.
Speaker B
No tail, no no fuzzy haze, absolutely nothing that screamed comet.
Speaker B
It got a boring old asteroid designation, 1979 VA. And later, the number 4015 seemed like just another rock floating around out there.
Speaker B
Okay, so now we have these two completely separate objects, right?
Speaker B
Discovered 30 years apart.
Speaker B
A lost comet from 49 and a kind of boring asteroid from 79.
Speaker B
And this right here is where the real detective work begins.
Speaker B
And these two seemingly unrelated cases are about to collide in a big way.
Speaker B
So let's just lay it out.
Speaker B
You've got two parallel stories going on.
Speaker B
In one lane, a comet that shows up and then vanishes.
Speaker B
In the other lane, a totally normal asteroid just doing its thing.
Speaker B
Seriously, nobody had any reason to think these two were connected until one Astronomer did some math that changed everything, and this is it.
Speaker B
This is the aha moment in 1992.
Speaker B
Some astronomers decide to take the orbit of that asteroid from 1979 and basically rewind it, run the calculations backwards in time.
Speaker B
And what they found was just stunning.
Speaker B
The path of this asteroid lined up perfectly with where the lost comet was seen back in 1949.
Speaker B
It wasn't two objects, it was the same object.
Speaker B
So this incredible discovery meant the object needed a new name.
Speaker B
One that could capture its totally bizarre double life.
Speaker B
It's now officially known as 107P4115 Wilson Harrington.
Speaker B
The P is for periodic comet, and the 4115 is its asteroid number.
Speaker B
That makes it a member of this tiny, super exclusive club of objects that have both a comet and an asteroid name.
Speaker B
So the whodunit of the missing comet was solved, but it blew the doors open on an even bigger mystery.
Speaker B
What is this thing really?
Speaker B
The case was closed, but the scientific investigation was just beginning.
Speaker B
It was time to unmask the imposter.
Speaker B
And this really became the million dollar question for everyone.
Speaker B
So what is it?
Speaker B
Is it an asteroid that just decided to act like a comet for a bit, or is it a comet that's, well, kind of dead now and just looks like an asteroid?
Speaker B
Basically, two main ideas bubbled to the surface.
Speaker B
First, you have the asteroid outburst theory.
Speaker B
The idea here is that it's mostly a rocky thing, but it's got these pockets of ice trapped under the surface.
Speaker B
And back in 1949, it got close enough to the sun to heat one of those pockets up, causing it to burst out and create a temporary tail, kind of like a cosmic pressure cooker.
Speaker B
Then there's the dying comet theory.
Speaker B
This suggests it's just the old rocky core of a comet that's pretty much run out of fuel.
Speaker B
You know, after zipping around the sun for ages, all its ice has basically boiled away.
Speaker B
And what we saw in 49 was just one of its last little gasps.
Speaker B
I mean, this thing was so weird, so interesting from a scientific standpoint, that NASA was like, we have to go see this thing up close.
Speaker B
It was actually chosen as a target for a really ambitious mission called Deep Space One.
Speaker B
But in a truly heartbreaking twist of fate, our chameleon stayed just out of reach.
Speaker B
So Deep Space One launched just fine in 1998 with Wilson Harrington in its sights.
Speaker B
But then a really critical piece of equipment failed.
Speaker B
The star tracker.
Speaker B
That's basically the spacecraft's eyes, how it navigates.
Speaker B
Without it, the probe just couldn't Steer itself precisely enough for a high speed flyby.
Speaker B
The whole encounter had to be called off.
Speaker B
So close, yet so far.
Speaker B
So getting a close up picture was a no go.
Speaker B
But that didn't stop scientists from keeping an eye on it from Earth.
Speaker B
And what they're finding just keeps the mystery going.
Speaker B
For instance, when we've learned it has this really weird rotation, instead of spinning smoothly like a top, it's tumbling kind of chaotically through space.
Speaker B
This complex motion hints that it might have a really unusual shape and maybe even a violent history.
Speaker B
That's part of why it's so weird.
Speaker B
Today, Wilson Harrington is a poster child for a whole new class of object.
Speaker B
The comet asteroid transition object.
Speaker B
These things are super rare and incredibly important because they're like a snapshot of how things evolve out there.
Speaker B
They help us piece together how our solar system was built.
Speaker B
You know, how icy stuff from way out there might've mixed with rocky stuff from in here and what that means for planets like Earth.
Speaker B
So even though it's managed to avoid a close up so far, the story of 107p is definitely not over.
Speaker B
If anything, its bizarre nature just makes it an even more tempting target for future space missions.
Speaker B
So why are we still so obsessed with this one particular rock?
Speaker B
Well, it's not just a curiosity.
Speaker B
It's one of those rare transition objects which basically makes it a time capsule from the very beginning of the solar system.
Speaker B
Plus, its orbit is actually pretty convenient for a spacecraft to get to.
Speaker B
And maybe the most exciting part, It's a serious candidate for a future Japanese sample return mission.
Speaker B
Can you imagine actually grabbing a piece of this chameleon and bringing it back home to study in a lab?
Speaker B
That would be incredible.
Speaker B
And that's really where the story stands today.
Speaker B
From a lost comet to a mysterious asteroid.
Speaker B
107P.
Speaker B
Wilson Harrington has totally blurred the lines we thought we understood.
Speaker B
And it leaves us with this one final nagging question.
Speaker B
What other secrets about the birth of our solar system are still locked away inside this cosmic chameleon just waiting for us to figure out how to unmask them.
Speaker A
Thanks again, Larry.
Speaker A
And just as most of us Wilsons are interesting, mysterious, and complicated, this comet is yet another example of why it's so much fun to explore Wilson's in our universe.
Speaker A
The bottom of our sandwich is our second place in space named Wilson.
Speaker B
And now it's time for the places category.
Speaker A
Since we just watched Artemis 2 go around the moon, I want to introduce you to a place named Wilson on the moon.
Speaker A
And on this place, we upgrade the asteroid's value from 2 to 1 to 3 to 1.
Speaker A
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, just look what you get if you listen.
Speaker A
Today you get a bonus three in one value.
Speaker A
Here's Mary to deliver the value.
Speaker C
You know, when you look at the Moon, you see this landscape just covered in scars.
Speaker C
And you might think they're just holes, but what if a single one of those ancient scars could tell a story not just about geology, but about centuries of human discovery?
Speaker C
Well, that's exactly what we're going to explore today.
Speaker C
This is the story of the Wilson Crater, a landmark that honors three brilliant and totally unrelated minds.
Speaker C
So let's start our journey in the Moon's southern highlands.
Speaker C
I want you to picture this.
Speaker C
It's one of the oldest, most beat up landscapes in our entire solar system.
Speaker C
I mean, it is just saturated with craters.
Speaker C
Every single one is a scar from a violent past, A relic from the age when planets were still being formed.
Speaker C
It's like looking at a history book that's 4 billion years old.
Speaker C
And out of this incredible endless field of impacts, we're going to zoom in on just one.
Speaker C
It's a medium sized crater, pretty worn down by time, and it's called the Wilson Crater.
Speaker C
So let's get a sense of the scale here.
Speaker C
The Wilson Crater is 69 kilometers wide.
Speaker C
That's about the size of a major city.
Speaker C
But you can tell it's ancient.
Speaker C
Its features are soft, worn down.
Speaker C
Billions of years of being pelted by tiny micrometeorites have smoothed out its once sharp edges.
Speaker C
It's become this quiet, silent witness to just an immense stretch of cosmic time.
Speaker C
Now, the way a crater like this gets made, it's just an event of unimaginable violence.
Speaker C
Some object, an asteroid or a comet, slams into the moon and all that energy, that kinetic energy, creates a shockwave that just blasts out a massive hole in seconds.
Speaker C
The whole thing really happens in three main stages.
Speaker C
First you get the collision and the excavation, the big boom.
Speaker C
Then comes the modification phase, where the crater zone walls kind of slump inward and settle down.
Speaker C
And then finally comes the long, slow process of degradation.
Speaker C
This is where Wilson is at now.
Speaker C
It's been in this stage for a very, very long time, getting slowly worn away by the harsh lunar environment.
Speaker C
Okay, so we've got this ancient geological feature.
Speaker C
Cool.
Speaker C
But the most amazing part of its story isn't about the rocks or the impact.
Speaker C
It's actually about the name.
Speaker C
Whose story is this crater actually telling?
Speaker C
And here is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker C
The Wilson Crater is pretty unique.
Speaker C
It's not named for One person.
Speaker C
It's named for three.
Speaker C
Three completely different scientists from different centuries, working in totally different fields, who just happen to share the same last name.
Speaker C
So let's meet him.
Speaker C
Alright, first up, let's go all the way back to the 18th century.
Speaker C
We're in the middle of the Scottish Enlightenment and we're meeting Alexander Wilson.
Speaker C
This guy was a surgeon, a mathematician, a meteorologist, a professor of practical astronomy.
Speaker C
I mean, a real polymath.
Speaker C
His biggest claim to fame is something called the Wilson effect.
Speaker C
See, back in 1769, he was watching sunspots and he noticed something weird.
Speaker C
As they rotated toward the edge of the sun, they looked kind of foreshortened, almost like you were looking into a shallow bowl.
Speaker C
This was a huge deal.
Speaker C
It was the first real proof that sunspots weren't just clouds floating above the sun.
Speaker C
They were actual features, depressions on the solar surface.
Speaker C
But Matt, Alexander Wilson's curiosity was just endless.
Speaker C
Way back in 1749, he was the first scientist we know of to use kites to measure air temperature at different altitudes.
Speaker C
And he was a pioneer in mineralogy, an inventor, and even a super successful type founder, making the letters for printing presses.
Speaker C
Just a brilliant mind.
Speaker C
And for that amazing work on sunspots, for figuring out what our star was really like, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters gave him a gold medal.
Speaker C
That was in the year 1772, and it totally cemented his place in history.
Speaker C
Okay, now let's jump forward about 150 years.
Speaker C
We're meeting our second Wilson, Charles Thompson.
Speaker C
Rees Wilson, another Scottish scientist.
Speaker C
But his obsession wasn't the stars.
Speaker C
It was the impossibly tiny world of subatomic particles.
Speaker C
His story, believe it or not, starts with clouds.
Speaker C
He was working on a mountain in Scotland and became fascinated by the light effects he saw in the mist.
Speaker C
So to study them, he built a box in his lab to make his own little clouds using supersaturated water vapor.
Speaker C
And then he found out that when charged particles shot through this vapor, they left these perfect little trails of condensation, like tiny airplane contrails.
Speaker C
This invention, the cloud chamber, literally made the invisible visible.
Speaker C
For the very first time, physicists could actually see the tracks of particles.
Speaker C
It was a game changer.
Speaker C
This led to a huge wave of discoveries, like the first time anyone ever saw a positron.
Speaker C
And it helped prove the Compton effect.
Speaker C
Absolutely revolutionary stuff.
Speaker C
And for that incredible invention, this tool that basically opened up a whole new way of doing physics, Ctr Wilson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Speaker C
The year was 1927.
Speaker C
His work had just changed how we see the universe forever.
Speaker C
And finally, we get to our third namesake, the American astronomer Ralph Elmer Wilson.
Speaker C
So if Alexander Wilson looked at our sun and Ctr Wilson looked at the atom, Ralph Wilson looked outward to the entire galaxy.
Speaker C
His life's work was all about the slow, careful, painstaking measurement of stellar radial velocities.
Speaker C
What's that?
Speaker C
It's basically figuring out if stars are moving toward us or away from us by measuring the tiny shift in the color of their light.
Speaker C
It's the Doppler effect.
Speaker C
But for stars.
Speaker C
Now, his career wasn't about one big flashy discovery.
Speaker C
It was about the hard, meticulous work of building the data, the foundation that basically all of modern astronomy stands on.
Speaker C
He compiled thousands and thousands of these measurements into one gigantic catalog.
Speaker C
And in the year 1953, he published his masterpiece, the General Catalog of Stellar Radial velocities.
Speaker C
It instantly became this essential tool for anyone studying how our Milky Way galaxy moves and how it's structured.
Speaker C
A true testament to a lifetime of quiet dedication.
Speaker C
So here they are, all three of them.
Speaker C
Look at this timeline.
Speaker C
Their lives span over 200 years of scientific progress.
Speaker C
You've got a sunspot observer, an atom revealer, and a galaxy mapper.
Speaker C
Three different worlds, three different eras, all united by one last name, and now by a single place on the moon.
Speaker C
And that brings us right back to where we started, doesn't it?
Speaker C
To that one ancient beat up crater in the lunar highlands.
Speaker C
It's so much more than just a dent in the ground.
Speaker C
It's an archive.
Speaker C
It's a monument to just how diverse and persistent and incredible the human drive to understand things really is.
Speaker C
Which leaves us with one last the moon's surface.
Speaker C
It's a record of history, right?
Speaker C
Both geological and human.
Speaker C
So as we start to really look towards exploring new worlds, we, Mars, the moons of Jupiter, you have to wonder, whose stories are we going to choose to tell?
Speaker C
Will it be the discoverers, the inventors, the quiet catalogers?
Speaker C
What names are we going to write on the landscapes of tomorrow?
Speaker A
Thank you, Mary.
Speaker A
I always knew there was a Wilson effect at work.
Speaker A
Whether it was a hundred years ago or just this morning, Wilson's all over the world make an impact that resonates with all of us.
Speaker A
Our third place, named Wilson, is here on Earth.
Speaker A
This place named Wilson was included today because it's located at the Kennedy Space center in Florida.
Speaker A
Before Artemis 2 lifted off for the mission around the moon, they received a little boost from a railroad at Wilson's corner.
Speaker A
Here's Larry to do the heavy lifting on this story.
Speaker B
Imagine a quiet fishing town vanishing overnight, totally replaced by NASA's industrial heartbeat.
Speaker B
Let's explore.
Speaker B
So what actually happened to the lost town of Wilson?
Speaker B
Well, to figure that out, we gotta go back.
Speaker B
Before rockets, Merritt island was just booming citrus groves and sleepy fishing villages.
Speaker B
Wilson was one quiet rural settlement.
Speaker B
Then the space race hit hard.
Speaker B
The government suddenly bought up nearly 84,000 acres of land for NASA.
Speaker B
This massive land grab for Apollo literally swallowed the tiny town of Wilson, Wiping it completely off the map.
Speaker B
In just one decade, Wilson morphed from quiet agriculture into a massive heavy duty aerospace rail hub.
Speaker B
The name survived as Wilson's Corners, but ironically it honors an army corps general, not the actual original town.
Speaker B
The contrast is totally wild, peaceful citrus orchards were completely paved over for a seven track classification rail yard.
Speaker B
Today, instead of tractors, massive NASA locomotives hauling helium cars roar straight through Wilson's historic footprint.
Speaker B
In it's crazy.
Speaker B
Wilson yard became the beating heart of NASA's 38 mile railroad.
Speaker B
Splitting traffic directly toward the VAB and launch pads.
Speaker B
To safely maneuver that highly explosive aerospace cargo.
Speaker B
The junction actually relies on 46 deliberate manually operated slip switches.
Speaker B
By 1983, the space shuttle program demanded a massive engineering upgrade at the yard to handle immense new loads to prevent shock loading on 150 ton rocket segments.
Speaker B
And engineers installed ultra heavy duty continuously welded rails and rock solid concrete cross ties.
Speaker B
Why such an extreme upgrade?
Speaker B
Well, a single loaded solid rocket booster car weighs a staggering £510,000.
Speaker B
Even with those upgraded rails, these specialized trains purposely crawl at just 25 miles per hour to protect hardware.
Speaker B
The tracks went totally quiet post shuttle.
Speaker B
But recently the Artemis program actually resurrected Wilson yard for heavy lift deliveries.
Speaker B
Modern Artemis operations swapped out those massive old locomotives for highly versatile, super cost effective industrial railcar movers.
Speaker B
Instead, this streamlined chain successfully delivered 10 massive booster segments all the way from Utah straight through Wilson yard.
Speaker B
Today, this entire 19 mile corridor is a recognized historic district, cementing its legendary Apollo and shuttle legacy forever.
Speaker B
This track isn't just history, you guys.
Speaker B
It remains a vital lifeline for America's future heavy lift space missions.
Speaker B
So as commercial spaceflight booms, how will private partnerships reshape the ghost town of Wilson next?
Speaker B
Keep wondering.
Speaker A
Thanks again, Larry.
Speaker A
Wilson isn't really a ghost town because there aren't any old abandoned buildings there anymore to house the ghosts.
Speaker A
Well, this is kind of a fun fact.
Speaker A
The area code in that county where all this action takes place and all those towns around there is.
Speaker A
3, 2, 1.
Speaker A
Liftoff.
Speaker A
Yep, the area code is 3, 2, 1.
Speaker A
Before we go on to our final frontier of Wilson's in space.
Speaker A
I have an idea and a request.
Speaker A
This episode would be great to share with other Wilsons that you know, but it also be a good one to share with people with a different name who might like sci fi or aviation, aerospace or astrology.
Speaker A
So even though their name is Wilson, they'd probably like it anyway, and they may know someone named Wilson to share it with.
Speaker A
This episode would also be great to share with a middle school student because they just may be inspired to be an astronaut.
Speaker A
So after this episode closes, hit the share button in your podcast player or just copy the video address and shoot them a text.
Speaker A
I can't wait for you to hear this story about this amazing astronaut named Wilson, who's been on three NASA space shuttle missions and now is on the Artemis team.
Speaker A
Here's Mary to introduce you to a Wilson that's out of this world.
Speaker C
Her career is incredible.
Speaker C
It literally spans from the last days of the space shuttle all the way to the dawn of our return to the moon.
Speaker C
Today we're going to talk about the journey of an astronaut who might just be at the very center of humanity's next great adventure.
Speaker C
I mean, just let that sink in for a second.
Speaker C
This quote from Planetary Radio isn't just some wild guess.
Speaker C
It's a real possibility, and it's built on a lifetime of dedication.
Speaker C
It really sets the stage for one of the most exciting stories in space exploration right now.
Speaker C
So who is this person we're talking about?
Speaker C
Her name is Stephanie Wilson.
Speaker C
And she's not just an astronaut.
Speaker C
She's a highly accomplished engineer, a veteran of multiple spaceflights, and this is key, a member of the Artemis team.
Speaker C
That's the group in charge of getting us back to the lunar surface.
Speaker C
But, you know, every journey like this has to start somewhere, right?
Speaker C
There's always that one moment that lights the spark.
Speaker C
So for Stephanie Wilson, where did this dream of reaching for the stars actually come from?
Speaker C
Well, what's so interesting is that it wasn't one big dramatic event.
Speaker C
Sure, she kind of remembers watching the Apollo landing as a toddler, you know, a fuzzy image on a black and white tv.
Speaker C
But the real defining moment, it came from a middle school assignment.
Speaker C
She had to interview someone in a field that interested her.
Speaker C
She chose an astronomer.
Speaker C
And that one conversation, well, it turned a casual curiosity about space into a real concrete goal.
Speaker C
Okay, so you've got this spark, but that's just the beginning, right?
Speaker C
It ignited this incredible journey, both in school and in her career.
Speaker C
This wasn't just about Dreaming of space.
Speaker C
It, it was about getting her hands dirty and building the actual skills to get there.
Speaker C
And just look at this path she carved out.
Speaker C
It's so methodical.
Speaker C
It starts with an engineering degree from Harvard.
Speaker C
Right out of school, she's working on the huge Titan 4 rockets.
Speaker C
Then she goes on to get her master's in aerospace engineering, which leads to a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory jpl, working on the Galileo mission to Jupiter.
Speaker C
I mean, each step is a bigger and bigger building block.
Speaker C
And it all leads up to 1996, when she's selected by NASA out of, get this, 2500 applicants.
Speaker C
And this wasn't just busy work.
Speaker C
Long before she ever flew, she was deep in the weeds of some seriously complex engineering.
Speaker C
We're talking about making sure these massive rockets don't fall apart during launch and ensuring a tiny spacecraft millions of miles away could aim its cameras perfectly to study Jupiter.
Speaker C
That is high stakes, mission critical work.
Speaker C
So with that incredible engineering background, what's next?
Speaker C
Well, it was finally time to leave the planet.
Speaker C
Becoming a seasoned astronaut is a whole other challenge.
Speaker C
And this is where Wilson really proved herself in, well, the most demanding environment you can possibly imagine.
Speaker C
42.
Speaker C
What's that number mean?
Speaker C
That's the total number of days Stephanie Wilson has spent in space.
Speaker C
42 Days.
Speaker C
Think about that.
Speaker C
More than a month of her life has been spent living and working in orbit.
Speaker C
That's the kind of experience you just can't get anywhere else.
Speaker C
Her time in space is built on three missions, all on the space shuttle Discovery.
Speaker C
And if you look closely, you can see a real theme in her duties.
Speaker C
On every single flight.
Speaker C
She was a primary robotic arm operator.
Speaker C
You know, the person maneuvering those huge modules and doing inspections.
Speaker C
On her first flight, she was also the load master.
Speaker C
She was in charge of transferring 28,000 pounds of cargo.
Speaker C
To put that in perspective, that's like managing the logistics of moving two adult elephants into orbit.
Speaker C
But her contributions aren't just about what she did up there.
Speaker C
Some of her most important work has happened with her feet planted firmly on the ground, acting as that crucial trusted link between mission control and her friends in space.
Speaker C
This job is called the Capcom.
Speaker C
It's short for capsule communicator, and it's always, always and astronaut.
Speaker C
Why?
Speaker C
Well, who better to talk a crew through a tricky situation than someone who's actually been there?
Speaker C
The Capcom is literally their lifeline to Earth.
Speaker C
And this role put her right at the center of a truly historic moment.
Speaker C
During the very first all women's spacewalk with astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir.
Speaker C
It was Stephanie Wilson's calm, experienced voice in their ears, guiding them from Mission Control in Houston.
Speaker C
A total veteran mentoring the next generation as they made history.
Speaker C
So we've got the inspiration, the intense preparation, the experience in orbit and the experience on the ground.
Speaker C
You can probably see where all of this is heading, right?
Speaker C
How does it all build toward that next giant leap?
Speaker C
This is where it all comes together.
Speaker C
She's part of that initial Artemis team.
Speaker C
Her incredible experience both in space and in Mission Control makes her one of the most qualified people on the entire planet for these new lunar missions.
Speaker C
And that puts her in a position to make some serious history, not just as the first woman, but also as the first African American to walk on the moon.
Speaker C
And you can just hear the excitement in her own words.
Speaker C
This is so much more than a job for her.
Speaker C
It's a real passion, kicking up some dust, helping the mission in any way she can.
Speaker C
She's ready for all of it.
Speaker C
That is the voice of a true explorer just eager to get to the next frontier.
Speaker C
So as pioneers like Stephanie Wilson get ready for this next incredible chapter, the question really goes beyond just one person.
Speaker C
I mean, it's been over 50 years since humans walked on another world.
Speaker C
This time, a whole new generation of explorers is going to go.
Speaker C
So the real question is, how will their journey change not just the moon, but all of us back here on Earth?
Speaker A
Thank you, Mary.
Speaker A
You did a stunning, stellar job.
Speaker A
And you can be sure that I'm going to follow Stephanie's career.
Speaker A
And I'll keep you informed about her next step in space.
Speaker A
Maybe she'll be doing the Texas two step on the moon.
Speaker A
But even if Stephanie becomes the first woman named Wilson to grace the dust on our moon, she won't be the first Wilson on the moon.
Speaker A
I'll have Larry tell you about the hidden story of the first Wilson on the moon.
Speaker B
Okay, let's dive into this wild story of the Wilson Club from the historic Apollo 14 mission.
Speaker B
So what's the most famous six iron in history?
Speaker B
Get ready for some serious rule bending ingenuity.
Speaker B
Meet our star, the 16 and a half ounce Wilson staff Dynapower 6 iron head that actually went to space.
Speaker B
And this brilliantly illustrates the hack.
Speaker B
Shepard swapped a steel shaft for a collapsible aluminum space tool.
Speaker B
Shepard and golf pro Jack Harden secretly modified this everyday clubhead to fit a lunar sample collector.
Speaker B
But how did it get there?
Speaker B
Shepard brilliantly smuggled the heavy head and two balls in a simple tube sock.
Speaker B
He made a tense deal with NASA brass.
Speaker B
He'd Only swing the club if the mission was flawless.
Speaker B
Let's move to and see how this builds.
Speaker B
After nine grueling hours of moonwalks, it was finally time.
Speaker B
Now that bulky pressurized spacesuit was super stiff, forcing Shepard into an awkward one handed sand trap.
Speaker B
Swing.
Speaker B
His first attempt, a famously bad chili dip.
Speaker B
He totally missed and just kicked up lunar dust.
Speaker B
When he finally made clean contact on the Wilson head, Shepard famously bragged it flew miles and miles.
Speaker B
Now, what's really interesting about this slide is the modern forensic data uncovered 50 years later by Andy Saunders.
Speaker B
Saunders completely debunked the myth that those balls only went 24 and 40 yards down the lunar fairway.
Speaker B
Still, in 1 6th gravity, hitting a one handed 40 yard drive in a stiff suit is a crazy athletic feat.
Speaker B
Plus, with zero atmospheric drag in a vacuum, that ball flew perfectly straight.
Speaker B
No slice, no hook.
Speaker B
For perspective, a modern Pro hitting at 185 miles per hour would crush at 4,611 yards up there.
Speaker B
Back on Earth, singer Bing Crosby and actually convinced Shepard to donate this famous Wilson clubhead.
Speaker B
Today, that legendary Wilson six iron head sits at the USGA Museum, a literal piece of space history.
Speaker B
So the crucial point is the balls stayed on the moon, but that ingenious Wilson head came home.
Speaker B
Is this ultimate space hack a monument to ingenuity or our profound instinct to play anywhere in the universe?
Speaker A
Now, I love golf and I have many cool stories to tell.
Speaker A
But Larry, that story is light years better than any of mine.
Speaker C
Are you ready for another Uncle Willie joke?
Speaker A
Uncle Willie went to a new restaurant on the back side of the moon called Mike's Moonwalker.
Speaker A
It was started by the Jackson 4.
Speaker A
Used to be the Jackson 5, but Mike's no longer with us.
Speaker A
Uncle Willie said that cheeseburgers only offered Swiss cheese, but the combo meal at least included sun chips and a drink called Tang.
Speaker A
For dessert, you could even get a moon pie.
Speaker A
And if you wanted a snack, they offered Milky way bars, Mars bars, orbit gum, and Starbursts.
Speaker A
I love those starbursts.
Speaker A
He also showed me a map for its location on the back side of the moon.
Speaker A
Oh, it looks like he's got asteroids.
Speaker A
Man, it's so dark back there, I bet you with the naked eye you can see Uranus.
Speaker A
Okay, overall, Uncle Willie said is a pretty good restaurant, but it didn't have much atmosphere.
Speaker A
Okay, okay, that's enough.
Speaker A
That's enough.
Speaker A
As you look at the cars in the line for the drive through, it reminded me there are cars back in the day which actually had celestial names.
Speaker A
Can you remember any, hit pause real quick and try to think of some.
Speaker A
But if you're listening with someone else, make a contest out of it.
Speaker A
See how many of those old cars you can list that have celestial names.
Speaker A
And then when you come back, they.
Speaker A
I'll give you a list of the ones I found.
Speaker A
Okay, now that you're back, how many could you name?
Speaker A
I probably came up with three or four.
Speaker A
But I did some research and, boy, there's a lot of them.
Speaker A
Here's what I came up with.
Speaker A
Ford had a division called Mercury.
Speaker A
Remember the Mercury that was a standalone division for the first six years of its life, and then it was later combined with the Lichen Division Division in 1945 to create Lincoln Mercury.
Speaker A
They made the Comet, the Meteor, the Tracer, kind of like behind the Meteor, and the Voyager, kind of like our space shuttle.
Speaker A
Ford also made the Galaxy.
Speaker A
That was a huge car.
Speaker A
But Chevrolet, they made a littler car called the Nova.
Speaker A
Now General Motors made a whole division called Saturn.
Speaker A
Remember the Saturn?
Speaker A
Its first model year was the 91 and the last one was 2010.
Speaker A
Mitsubishi made the Eclipse, remember that?
Speaker A
Nissan made the Pulsar.
Speaker A
Then there is Subaru.
Speaker A
Here's what's cool about that.
Speaker A
The word Subaru is a direct translation of of the name Pleiades, which is a cluster of over a thousand stars.
Speaker A
But only six of the stars are available to the naked eye.
Speaker A
Therefore, there are six stars in their logo, which also has another meaning.
Speaker A
The big star represents the parent company, Fuji heavy industries.
Speaker A
The five smaller stars represent five smaller companies that merged after World War II to form Fuji Heavy Industries.
Speaker A
Hey, wait.
Speaker A
Come back.
Speaker A
Come back.
Speaker A
While all those Subaru owners in Colorado hit pause to go out to their garage and count the stars on the logo of their car, I'll tell you about another car logo that represents a merger.
Speaker A
This is kind of fun.
Speaker A
Has nothing to do with the Subaru.
Speaker A
You've seen the Audi logo and it's got four rings.
Speaker A
They represent four German manufacturers, three of which make cars, and one that was the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer at the time.
Speaker A
In 1932, during the Depression, the German auto industry was really struggling to survive.
Speaker A
Audi and the other three manufacturers merged to form one company.
Speaker A
Welcome back, all you Subaru owners.
Speaker A
Let's continue.
Speaker A
There's one more Wilson who's been to space.
Speaker A
And this time it really was a living human being named Wilson.
Speaker A
And it was just last year, in February of 2025.
Speaker A
You've probably heard of the name Russell Wilson, right?
Speaker A
Well, even though he isn't an Astronaut.
Speaker A
He has also been up to space and back.
Speaker A
He was one of those civilians that went up on the New shepherd rocket from Jeff Bezos company Blue Origin.
Speaker A
Wait, the rocket's name is the New Shepherd?
Speaker A
Well, that's Alan Shepard that I told you about already who smuggled the Wilson Six Iron Club head to hit his golf balls on the moon.
Speaker A
Wow, there's another six degrees of separation to a Wilson.
Speaker A
And that's just like the song from the Wilson Banjo Company called Six Degrees of Separation.
Speaker A
This is getting crazy.
Speaker A
All right, there's a great story of why Russell only had R, period, Wilson on his spacesuit and.
Speaker A
And why ESPN didn't make a story about it.
Speaker A
Mary, tell us about Russell Wilson going into space.
Speaker C
Welcome to this exclusive and I am so incredibly excited to share this one with you today because honestly, it plays out exactly like a modern day tech thriller.
Speaker C
Okay, so picture this.
Speaker C
It is February 25, 2025.
Speaker C
Jeff Bezos Aerospace Company Blue Origin is launching its 10th crewed suborbital mission to known as NS30 right out of the West Texas desert.
Speaker C
You've got six passengers strapped into this New Shepard capsule and they are hurtling past the 65 mile mark, the Carmen line, into literal outer space.
Speaker C
We've got a Spanish TV host, an American venture capitalist, a fragility doctor.
Speaker C
But there is one passenger on this flight who immediately catches everyone's attention.
Speaker C
And why?
Speaker C
Well, because nobody actually knows who he is.
Speaker C
Now, Blue Origin normally releases the profiles of all their spaceflighters publicly, right?
Speaker C
But for this specific passenger, they explain explicitly stated they were respecting his request for extreme privacy.
Speaker C
During the live launch commentary, the announcers just casually mentioned that he wanted to remain under the radar.
Speaker C
But over the Carmen line, the only real clues anyone had were photos of this guy in a blue flight suit with the name R. Wilson emblazoned on it.
Speaker C
And that same last name stitched right onto the official mission patch.
Speaker C
When he finally emerged from the capsule after the parachute landed in the desert, he just let out this massive joyful woo.
Speaker C
But the mystery totally remained.
Speaker C
Who on earth could drop a multi million dollar check for a ticket to space while completely, and I mean completely, avoiding the public spotlight?
Speaker C
Well, you know how it is.
Speaker C
You really can't keep a secret on the Internet for very long.
Speaker C
Almost immediately online space sleuths and youtubers just want to work analyzing every frame of the flight footage and digging through passenger manifests.
Speaker C
Now, the name R. Wilson might automatically make you think of a certain super bowl winning NFL quarterback.
Speaker C
But the digital detectives quickly ruled him out.
Speaker C
Instead, the breadcrumbs pointed halfway across the globe to an unbelievably wealthy, yet entirely reclusive figure down in Australia.
Speaker C
It turns out our mystery astronaut was a man named Russell Wilson.
Speaker C
Who is Russell Wilson?
Speaker C
So who is this guy?
Speaker C
Well, before he was blasting off in rockets, Wilson was just an everyday IT consultant and software engineer.
Speaker C
Back in 2013, he decided he wanted to simplify the super complex world of cryptocurrency for the average Australian.
Speaker C
He wanted to abstract away all those technical nightmares of peer to peer crypto transfers and just build a simple centralized platform.
Speaker C
But what makes him so fascinating today is the absolute wild juxtaposition of his life.
Speaker C
On one hand, you have this astronomical wealth.
Speaker C
He officially made the billionaire list and pulled in a staggering $538 million in dividends over just a two year period.
Speaker C
But then look at his day to day reality.
Speaker C
He lives in a pretty modest four bedroom house in the Melbourne suburbs that he bought for around $586,000.
Speaker C
And get this, he runs his multi million dollar financial empire quietly nestled right next door to a Pilates studio and a massage therapist.
Speaker C
It is crazy.
Speaker C
And the real secret sauce to this massive personal wealth actually comes down to one simple number.
Speaker C
77%.
Speaker C
See, unlike a lot of tech founders who dilute their ownership through endless exhausting rounds of venture capital funding, Wilson just didn't do that.
Speaker C
He maintained a remarkably concentrated 77% ownership stake in his company, an entity called KC Block Services.
Speaker C
And that massive slice of the pie is exactly what catapulted him onto the financial rich list, rubbing shoulders with mining magnates and real estate tycoons.
Speaker C
The Coinspot crypto empire.
Speaker C
So the actual engine behind all of this immense wealth is Coinspot, the cryptocurrency exchange he co founded in Melbourne with a guy named Brendan Halfpenny.
Speaker C
And their strategy was brilliant.
Speaker C
By focusing intensely on domestic compliance and user accessibility, rather than, you know, trying for some chaotic global expansion right out of the gate, they essentially cornered the Aussie market.
Speaker C
To put this in perspective, just look at the sheer scale here.
Speaker C
Over 2.5 million users.
Speaker C
That is a massive, massive chunk of the entire Australian population using one single platform to trade digital assets.
Speaker C
This user base absolutely exploded during the pandemic lockdowns.
Speaker C
We're talking doubling from 1 to 2 million users in just a six month window in 2021.
Speaker C
And Wilson's Cloud architecture, it handled that unprecedented tidal wave of traffic flawlessly, without the platform ever collapsing.
Speaker C
And if you're wondering how Coinspot actually stacks up against those massive global Juggernauts like Kraken.
Speaker C
Well, their localized strategy is the key.
Speaker C
Coinspot absolutely dominates by catering specifically to everyday Australians.
Speaker C
Sure, they support a ton of coins, somewhere between 370 and over 530 different cryptocurrencies.
Speaker C
But the real kicker, the local fiat on ramps.
Speaker C
Users can actually go and deposit physical cash via Blueshift at local retail shops, or they can just use standard local bank transfers, PayID and BPAY Plus.
Speaker C
And this is huge in crypto.
Speaker C
They offer 24.
Speaker C
7 Live local support with actual real human beings.
Speaker C
They built an infrastructure that just feels local, feels safe, and feels distinctly Australian.
Speaker C
And then Wilson pulled off this absolute masterstroke of brand legitimization.
Speaker C
In 2021, Coinspot became the premier partner of the Western Bulldogs, which is a major Australian Football League team.
Speaker C
They were literally the first crypto exchange to secure a back of Guernsey sponsorship.
Speaker C
And what I love about this is that Wilson specifically insisted the partnership had to cover both the men's AFL and the women's AFLW teams equally.
Speaker C
By aligning his tech platform with the absolute cultural bedrock of Aussie Rules football, Coinspot seamlessly transitioned from being just some niche Internet tool into a trusted household name.
Speaker C
The Blackpool heist.
Speaker C
Now, as you can imagine, building a digital empire of this scale isn't without its existential threats.
Speaker C
And this brings us to the mini thriller embedded right in the middle of our story.
Speaker C
A staggering $37 million was abruptly siphoned right out of Coinspot.
Speaker C
But here's the twist.
Speaker C
This wasn't some highly sophisticated state sponsored cyber terrorism ring.
Speaker C
Nope.
Speaker C
It was orchestrated by a guy named James Parker.
Speaker C
He was a UK resident living on disability benefits in the rainy coastal town of Blackpool.
Speaker C
And he was quite literally trading tiny fractions of Bitcoin from his bed.
Speaker C
Okay, so here is exactly how this wild heist went down.
Speaker C
Parker somehow stumbled upon a very specific glitch in Coinspot's system.
Speaker C
It essentially allowed a user to sell a Bitcoin and instantly buy it right back.
Speaker C
The glitch would record the user as still possessing the Bitcoin.
Speaker C
But, and here is the fatal flaw.
Speaker C
It would also wrongly credit their account with the physical cash from the sale.
Speaker C
Parker and a small group of associates just started exploiting this flaw on an industrial scale.
Speaker C
I mean, at one point, they were stealing 159,000 Australian dollars in less than a single minute.
Speaker C
They then took all these fraudulent credits and rapidly laundered them through international exchanges to buy up luxury goods and real estate in places like the uae.
Speaker C
So when Coinspot's internal Monitors finally woke up and flagged these massive, erratic transaction volum.
Speaker C
Wilson immediately picked up the phone and called the local UK police, but the operator basically just didn't believe him.
Speaker C
They couldn't fathom that an Australian tech company was the victim of a multimillion dollar crypto fraud being run out of Blackpool.
Speaker C
But Wilson, he was completely undeterred.
Speaker C
He personally launched a massive internal forensic probe, which he brilliantly codenamed Project Eucalyptus.
Speaker C
He hired a private investigator on his own dimension and tracked the digital and physical breadcrumbs all the way back to northwest England.
Speaker C
And this all led to this incredibly cinematic climax.
Speaker C
Wilson actually managed to obtain James Parker's personal mobile number.
Speaker C
So as Parker is physically standing in an airport terminal waiting to board a flight to escape to Dubai, his phone buzzes.
Speaker C
He looks down, it's an Australian number.
Speaker C
He answers.
Speaker C
And on the other end is Russell Wilson calmly telling Parker he knows all about the stolen millions and he wants his money back right now.
Speaker C
Parker completely panics, blurts out f off, I'm not a thief.
Speaker C
And hangs up.
Speaker C
Ultimately, the pressure got to them.
Speaker C
The gang turned on each other, and several members were later sentenced to a collective 26.5 years in prison.
Speaker C
Although crazily enough, Parker actually passed away before he could be formally charged.
Speaker C
Section four, the blueprint for success.
Speaker C
Honestly, a $37 million heist could have easily destroyed company forever, but instead, revolution.
Speaker C
Wilson just absorbed the losses internally so that everyday customer funds were never actually compromised.
Speaker C
And he used this massive crisis as a catalyst to build an incredibly aggressive security fortress.
Speaker C
Because of that, today Coinspot holds an unblemished record of 0 successful external hacking breaches over its entire decade of operation.
Speaker C
Wilson leaned heavily into his cybersecurity background.
Speaker C
He got them ISO 27001 certified, implemented strict geolocked logins so foreign actors can't even try to access accounts, moved the vast majority of digital assets into multi layered offline cold storage, and set up 24.
Speaker C
7 Live monitoring.
Speaker C
They also mandate super rigorous anti money laundering checks.
Speaker C
So you have to have a valid ID and a local phone number.
Speaker C
It is practically Fort Knox now.
Speaker C
And because of that security foundation, today the Coinspot ecosystem is just this massive comprehensive hub for digital finance.
Speaker C
Wilson architected a system that completely abstracts the headache and complexity of blockchain tech for the everyday retail investor.
Speaker C
Right from the app, you can do spot trading, you can earn yield staking up to a pretty crazy 76% epy.
Speaker C
And they even have their own native built in NFT marketplace.
Speaker C
And what's cool about that is, you can actually buy global collections like bored apes using literally any of the hundreds of cryptocurrencies on their platform.
Speaker C
Not just Ethereum.
Speaker C
It's basically an entire financial universe just neatly wrapped up in a super easy to use interface.
Speaker C
Which honestly brings us right back full circle to where we started today.
Speaker C
Russell Wilson represents this completely new, fascinating archetype of the modern tech titan.
Speaker C
He operates entirely in the background, completely dodging the glitz and glamour of public life, and yet he holds enough concentrated quiet wealth to casually fund private multimillion dollar space flights, all while his massively successful business hums along from a modest suburban office block next to a Pilates studio.
Speaker C
It really leaves us with a fascinating question to ponder as digital finance continues to create this kind of astronomical, decentralized wealth.
Speaker C
How is this next generation of billionaires going to balance their extreme space bound fortunes with the desire for reclusive suburban privacy?
Speaker C
It's a completely new frontier, you guys, both here on Earth and up there above the Carmen line.
Speaker C
Thank you so much for joining me for this explainer.
Speaker C
I had a blast and I absolutely cannot wait to dive into the next topic with you.
Speaker A
Oh, did you think I was talking about an NFL football quarterback?
Speaker A
Well, if I misled you with a verbal clickbait, I'm sorry.
Speaker A
Not really.
Speaker A
I didn't lie, did I?
Speaker A
Well, I just wanted to give you a reason to listen closely to my episodes in the future and I will try to trick you again.
Speaker A
And as the famous Louisiana chef named Justin Wilson says, I guarantee.
Speaker B
But now it's time for Wilson's in the News.
Speaker A
Wow, this is perfect timing for this episode.
Speaker A
This spring, Wilson Sporting Goods Golf introduced a new line of golf irons named Launch Pad 2.
Speaker A
I wonder if they knew I was going to mention their golf club that Allen shepherd hit the golf balls with on the moon.
Speaker A
I have a link in our show notes for a review of this golf club, but I also have a link for all the rest of these people in the news that is coming up now.
Speaker A
Chicago businessman and philanthropist Willie Wilson held his 20th gas giveaway, spending $500,000 spread out between 30 gas stations to residents in the Chicago metro area to help ease the high gas prices we're experiencing right now because of the Iran conflict.
Speaker A
The Steve Wilson Quintet is playing that smoke jazz club in New York City.
Speaker A
Now don't get Steve Wilson with the Quintet confused with Stephen Wilson Jr. That's Stephen with a ph.
Speaker A
He just won his first country music award at the CMA last week.
Speaker A
And a few days later, another country star named Wilson finally tied the knot.
Speaker A
Lainey Wilson married former NFL quarterback Delvin Duck Hodges, who she has been dating for five years.
Speaker A
The Steve Wilson Quintet is playing at Smoke Jazz Club in New York City.
Speaker A
Little League President and CEO Patrick Wilson is named to the Positive Coaching Alliance National Board of Directors.
Speaker A
Now we highlight athletes named Wilson.
Speaker A
In Sporting News, the late Porter Wilson is honored as the father of flag football.
Speaker A
That's pretty cool.
Speaker A
Did you know that flag football is one of the next competitions in the Olympics?
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And related to that, Russell Wilson, Serena Williams and Tiger woods lead the charge, partnering with the NFL to launch a professional flag football league for both men and women.
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And this is to build momentum ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, Women's soccer star Sophia Wilson scores her first goal back from maternity leave and it was a game winner.
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It's pretty cool.
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The One of the best soccer players for women's sports is A. Wilson.
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And currently the best basketball player in women's sports is also a Wilson named Asia Quincy Wilson sets a new 400 meter national record in high school track.
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He swept the New Balance National Indoor titles across all four years in high school, which is a rare four peat in drag racing.
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Tony Wilson took home the Pro Mod Ironman Trophy and a prize money of $50,000.
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Well, that's about how much drag racers spend on just their tires in one season, so it won't last long.
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We're in the middle of the pro hockey playoffs, but Tom Wilson's Capitals are not playing.
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Earlier in March, the Capitals honored Tom with a tribute video for his 900th career game.
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And guess what?
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He scores two goals to help win the game.
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Share this podcast with your friends named Wilson Hit subscribe or follow.
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Thanks for joining us and until next week.
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See you Cuz.
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Some portions of the show were created by various AI products and data from the Internet.
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These include explainer reviews by Google's Notebook lm.
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Well, LM is where I get Larry and Mary from.
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The Cuz Wilson show is a product of name and culture media.