In Episode 457, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger head to New Boston, New Hampshire, to explore ground zero where wealthy eccentric Roger Babson formed the Gravity Research Foundation. Their goal: to build a shield or a device to win the war against gravity. There may be more science here than science fiction!
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Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Voice Actor: Marv Anderson
Theme Music by: John Judd
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[DRIVING IN CAR]
JEFF: Okay, Ray, this looks like a good place to park up here on the right.
RAY: In the parking lot of that building?
JEFF: Yeah, that white building over there.
RAY: Got it.
[CAR STOPS]
[DOORS OPEN / CLOSE]
RAY: So we’re right in the heart of New Boston, New Hampshire.
JEFF: A town once thought to be one of the safest places in America should nuclear bombs fall. It’s far enough away from major cities.
RAY: So we’ve got THAT going for us.
JEFF: We do! Let’s head across the street to this little island in the middle of the intersection.
[WALKING ON ROAD]
RAY: (TRIPS AND FALLS) Woah! Ow!
JEFF: Ray, are you okay!?
RAY: Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just tripped over my own feet. I’m not hurt, I just feel dumb.
JEFF: I’m glad you’re okay. Ray, you just fell victim to humanity’s greatest enemy.
RAY: My feet?
JEFF: No… gravity.
RAY: Oh that.
JEFF: Gravity is relentless. But here in town, folks once did something about it. Go ahead, Ray. Read this historic marker in front of us in the middle of this traffic island.
RAY: Okay, it says: Here at New Boston, New Hampshire, Roger W. Babson and his associates pioneered in active research for anti-gravity and a partial gravity insulator. 1959.
JEFF: Ray, we’ve come to New Boston, to witness the first shots humans fired in the war against gravity.
[INTRO]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger, welcome to Episode 457 of the New England Legends podcast.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger. Thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every wicked strange legend in New England, from roadside oddities to ghosts, monsters, UFOs, and all of the other weirdness that makes our region great.
JEFF: Also, if you’ve got a story you want to share, consider joining our street team!
RAY: The New England Legends Street Team needs you! All you have to do is file a field report from some legendary place you’re exploring in New England. Record some audio for us and tell us a little bit about the location and the legend. You could even record it on your phone! Just please keep it short. No longer than X minutes, and then email it to us through our website. You might hear yourself on a future podcast episode.
JEFF: We’ll explore this strange gravitational story in New Boston, right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
RAY: Okay, Jeff… there was a war against gravity?
JEFF: Kind of!
RAY: Is that a war you can win?
JEFF: I guess you could travel to space, but even then, gravity is still a factor. It never goes away. It’s relentless. Ray, remember watching Wile E. Coyote cartoons as a kid?
RAY: Sure, Saturday mornings meant cartoons!
JEFF: Right. Remember when the Road Runner would trick Wile E. Coyote to run right off a cliff?
RAY: Yeah! Wile E. Coyote would race off the cliff by several feet and stand still in mid-air until he realized there was no ground underneath him.
JEFF: Right.
RAY: And then he would fall to the earth below.
JEFF: Meaning…
RAY: Meaning gravity only works if you notice it.
JEFF: Exactly. If cartoons taught us nothing it’s that physics and gravity only apply if you’re looking down.
RAY: Right. Okay, this historic marker names Roger Babson. Is that the same Roger Babson of Babson College fame?
JEFF: The very same.
RAY: And the same Roger Babson who had all of those boulders engraved with uplifting sayings in the abandoned Dogtown Commons of Gloucester, Massachusetts?
JEFF: That’s our guy.
RAY: I had no idea he had a beef with gravity.
JEFF: Roger Babson was a wealthy entrepreneur, investor, businessman, and philanthropist, and fair to say, an eccentric too. He wanted to use his wealth and influence to solve problems. And for Babson, gravity was a big problem. To see how this historic marker got here, let’s head back to 1949.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s the winter of 1949 here in New Boston, New Hampshire. Harry S. Truman is in the White House, World War II is fading into the background, though ironically the Cold War with Russia is just heating up, and “A Little Bird Told Me” by Evelyn Knight and the Stardusters is number one on the charts.
JEFF: Though all out nuclear war is in the back of just about everyone’s minds these days, people like Roger Babson are looking into more immediate problems. Namely: gravity.
RAY: How is gravity a problem? I mean, it’s been around literally forever.
JEFF: True. But the way Roger Babson sees it, what’s the cause of every plane crash?
RAY: Uhhhh engine failure? Pilot error? Wars?
JEFF: Well yeah… but at the end of the day… gravity is what brings a broken plane hurling toward the unforgiving ground.
RAY: Well…. Right.
JEFF: And not just airplane crashes. Gravity plays a factor in any fall and almost every accident. Plus, for Babson, his issues with gravity date back to his childhood, when his sister tragically drowned in a river near his hometown of Gloucester. Babson said of the incident:
BABSON: She was unable to fight gravity, which came up and seized her like a dragon and brought her to the bottom. There she smothered and died from lack of oxygen.
JEFF: Just two years ago, Babson’s grandson died—also by drowning. His fire against nature’s relentless force was further fueled.
BABSON: Gradually I found that “old man Gravity” is not only directly responsible for millions of deaths each year, but also for millions of accidents … Broken hips and other broken bones as well as numerous circulatory, intestinal and other internal troubles are directly due to the people’s inability to counteract Gravity at a critical moment.
RAY: Babson took this crusade seriously. Being wealthy and powerful, he purchased a Washington DC-based company called Invention Incorporated so he could have three investigators in the U.S. Patent Office at all times looking through the incoming patent proposals.
BABSON: The investigators were constantly on the watch for any machine, alloy, chemical or formula which directly relates to the harnessing of gravity.
JEFF: Babson believed that some sort of gravity harness could be developed that could act as a partial insulator from gravity. If it worked, it could save countless lives.
RAY: Okay, I’m no physicist.
JEFF: Neither am I.
RAY: Right. We’re just two beer-swilling, knuckle-dragging buddies with questions.
JEFF: Right.
RAY: How can someone wealthy and learned like Babson. An MIT grad. How does a guy with all of these resources, knowledge, and money, think he can outsmart gravity?
JEFF: Eccentrics, am I right?
RAY: I guess so.
JEFF: But Babson is as serious as a heart attack about this. So he forms the Gravity Research Foundation or GRF, in New Boston, New Hampshire. Their goal is to collect and distribute all gravity-related studies and information and fund research projects related to creating a gravity shield.
RAY: It sounds like science fiction to me, not science.
JEFF: And you’re not the only doubter. Still, a lot of science began as science fiction. Rockets for one thing. And now they can carry the most destructive weapons humans have ever built over the span of thousands of miles. A century ago you would be laughed at for suggesting such a thing was possible.
RAY: Okay, fair enough. So the Gravity Research Foundation sets up offices in New Boston, and begins offering money and resources to any person or organization working on gravity-related research.
JEFF: Roger Babson has been a voice in the popular culture for decades. He pens articles for prestigious and famous publications, he predicted the crash of the stock market in 1929 based on physics, people listen to him. He’s a smart guy. In physics he understands Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion. For every action there in an equal and opposite reaction.
RAY: What goes up, must come down, as they say.
JEFF: Exactly. Babson also understands that gravity is an incredibly weak force.
RAY: What do you mean, “weak?” It holds the earth in rotation around the sun, it holds us down on the planet so we don’t fly off into space. How is that weak?
JEFF: Have you ever jumped into the air, Ray?
RAY: I’ve played basketball once or twice in my day.
JEFF: Little old you is able to jump into the air and completely leave planet earth below. You must be a superhuman superhero.
RAY: Come onnnnn… I’m only jumping up a few inches before I come back down.
JEFF: Right, but you can still leave the planet using only the strength of your legs. And now we have rockets that can reach outer space! It just happened February 24th of this year in the White Sands of New Mexico. With enough thrust, the rocket made it to space.
RAY: Okay, I see your point.
JEFF: Plus, have you ever held two magnets together holding the same poles next to each other?
RAY: Sure! When you do that, the magnets actually push away from each other.
JEFF: It’s cool, right? A magnetic force field that forces the other magnet away.
RAY: So maybe gravity has some equal and opposite force that could insult us from a fall?
JEFF: That’s the thought. The Gravity Research Foundation is committed to finding that force and harnessing. They’re offering grants, and then hold an annual essay contest. They want the greatest minds in the world to put some thought into the subject of gravity. As years pass, the Gravity Research Foundation mainly turns itself into a prestigious essay contest that encourages people to think about gravity in new ways. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: And now this historic marker sits here in the middle of an intersection in New Boston.
JEFF: It does, and it’s one of a dozen historic markers placed by the Gravity Research Foundation. The rest are placed on college campuses. And the GRF’s essay contest continues to this day. Some past winners of the contest include Bryce DeWitt, and Nobel Laureates George Smoot and Stephen Hawking.
RAY: Not bad company.
JEFF: Right?! To visit one of the other stones…
[CAR DOORS OPEN / CLOSE]
[CAR DRIVES OFF]
JEFF: Let’s head down to Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
RAY: Babson College has one of the other markers?
JEFF: It does.
[CAR STOPS / DOORS OPEN/CLOSE]
[WALKING]
JEFF: Okay, here’s Babson College’s marker.
RAY: It says: This Monument has been erected by the Gravity Research Foundation. Roger W. Babson, founder. It is to remind students of the blessings forthcoming when science determines what gravity is, how it works, and how it may be controlled.
JEFF: Let’s head over to the North Lawn…
[WALKING]
JEFF: There’s one more thing at Babson college that we need to see. It’s right over hear near Tomasso Hall.
RAY: Okay, I see some apple trees. I get it. Apples falling. Gravity.
JEFF: You’re right. But these aren’t just any apple trees, Ray. These trees are descended from the grove of apple trees from Isaac Newton’s childhood home in Lincolnshire, England. A cutting of the descended tree was gifted to Roger Babson years ago. He planted one at the college that bears his name. And since then, that tree has given rise to these others.
RAY: That is really incredible. So much history and legacy right here on this campus. And all because Roger Babson once had a serious beef with gravity.
JEFF: If you think about it, we defy gravity all of the time. We jump in the air. We lift things off the ground. We step into a commercial airplane—a machine with enough thrust to slip the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God. And until the Gravity Research Foundation finds a solution to gravity, we need to pray that our airplane’s landing is as gentle as its takeoff.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: Amen to that. And that takes us to After the Legend where we dive deeper into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
JEFF: After the Legend is brought to you by our gravity-defying patreon patrons! This group of insiders are the best. They help us financially with our hosting and production costs, travel, marketing, and all of the other expenses it takes to bring you two stories each week. We can’t do it without our team of patrons behind us. We don’t have a big podcast network, we’ve got you. Please help the cause if you can. Just click over to patreon.com/newenglandlegends to sign up.
To see some pictures of related to this week’s story including the historic marker in New Boston, New Hampshire, click on the link in our episode description or go to our website and click on Episode 457.
If you’ve got a story lead you think we should check out, please reach out to us anytime through our website. We love hearing from you. Plus, our website is the place to find out about Jeff’s ongoing story tour. There are a lot of dates coming up this fall! Dates to see my band the Pub Kings, plus links to buy Jeff’s books, and so much more. Also, please tell your friends about our show and post a review for us. That’s how we grow.
We’d like to thank Marv Anderson for lending his voice acting talents this week, thank you to our patreon patrons, and our theme music is by John Judd.
Until next time remember… the bizarre is closer than you think.