You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. You're escape to reality.

Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Monday April 4th, 2011, and this is your host, Steven Novella.

Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody, Rebecca Watson. Hello everyone.

Jane Novella, hey guys, and Evan Bernstein. Good evening everyone. Good evening.

Well, it was on this day, April 9th, 1959, that NASA announced the selection of America's first seven astronauts for Project Mercury.

And we all know them as the Mercury Seven.

Cool. They were chosen because they had the right stuff, baby.

It doesn't work. It wasn't even a baby on the Earth. It was just repeating the name of a movie.

That doesn't even count the joke.

Oh yeah, the fact that everyone laughed though makes it count as a joke.

Yeah, look who's laughing. I think it was more as deliberate. It could be.

It was ironically funny.

I was curious to find out how few people actually tried to get the job.

Me too. 110 seemed little wrong. They're eight.

Homer Simpson was the eighth. You got booted.

But you would think something with that high profile, that cool, that totally seeded in science fiction to the public.

Yeah, but it wasn't there pool starting out very narrow. Meaning they were saying we were looking for test pilots.

Yeah, how many test pilots could there have been at the time exactly needed like a really specific set of skills in order to even be considered for it?

I will guarantee you that there were 110 test pilots at the time because I'm sure what test pilot would not do that?

Who wouldn't want to do that?

Truckie Anchor didn't want to do it. He was too cool for the Mercury program.

Like he had better things going on than that.

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