Inventing the internet and pioneering satellite navigation, U.S. government agency DARPA has had an illustrious history since being founded by President Eisenhower (as the Advanced Research Projects Agency) on February 7th, 1958. 

Created in response to the Soviets launching Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, its mission, which continues to this day, is ‘to prevent technological surprise.’

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly uncover how DARPA helped create the humble computer mouse; explain how former Nazi Wernher von Braun found his way to the head of this supposedly All-American organisation; and look forward to a world of self-sustaining surveillance robots eating us out of house and home…

Further Reading:

• ‘Fifty years of DARPA: A surprising history’ (New Scientist, 2008): https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13908-fifty-years-of-darpa-a-surprising-history/

• ‘The Nazi Science That Fed the Apollo 11 Moon Landing’ (Time, 2019): https://time.com/5627637/nasa-nazi-von-braun/

• ‘3 of the strangest projects DARPA has worked on’ (Tech Insider, 2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hSs0S5FVx8

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The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill.

Theme Music: Pass The Peas. Announcer: Bob Ravelli. Graphic Design: Terry Saunders. Edit Producer: Ollie Peart

Copyright: Rethink Audio / Olly Mann 2025.

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