Two nepo babies from rival candy empires create the M&M in 1941. The U.S. Army becomes their first client. Soldiers come home as loyal customers. A custom peanut variety is engineered at a Georgia university. Then the spokes-candies get flat shoes and trigger a national culture war. Kim Severson's M&M story is the story of America.
Where this was said
At 27:05 · chapter starts 20:54
Bill Wasik admits his team worked backwards from a gut feeling about what felt most American, and landed on the nationally televised rocket launch as the phenomenon — then traced it to Goddard's discovery of liquid rocket fuel as the enabling invention. There's something honest and self-aware about the reasoning: the scientific discovery is important, but what makes it most American is the spectacle it created, the way it became a collective national ritual of fire and noise and wonder. Wasik's deadpan observation that 'big explosions and flames and smoke — what could be more American?' lands somewhere between pride and self-deprecation.
The promise: anyone can join. The reality: it depends on your jewelry, your network, and your social capital. Madis Malone Kircher argues that Bama Rush is the most American internet phenomenon precisely because it plays out this national contradiction in real time, in front of millions, on TikTok.
Madis Malone Kircher argues Bama Rush is the most American online phenomenon because it embodies the friction between the promise of meritocracy and the reality of hidden social hierarchies.
Factories that replaced coal engines with electric ones in the early 1900s got only 6% efficiency gains. Those that redesigned their entire factory around electricity got a 3x productivity improvement. Swapping AI tools into your existing structure will give you 6%. Rebuilding around AI will give you 10x.
Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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