Podbit · The Rest Is History
While battles raged in America, Franklin arrived at Versailles wearing a frontiersman's fur cap among powdered wigs and played every Enlightenment fantasy the French intellectual class had about the New World. This was not vanity — it was strategy. The French military alliance he secured proved decisive in winning American independence.
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At 59:20 · chapter starts 57:00
In October 1776, three months after signing the Declaration of Independence, the 70-year-old Franklin boarded the American sloop of war the Reprisal and crossed the Atlantic in rough winter conditions — conditions he said 'almost demolished him' — to serve as America's first ambassador to a foreign power [1] — Tom Holland "While battles raged in America, Franklin arrived at Versailles wearing a frontiersman's fur cap among powdered wigs and played every Enligh…" 59:20 . He spent 9 years in France, and his diplomatic method was as theatrical as it was brilliant: he wore a frontiersman's fur cap at the court of Versailles, played simultaneously on Rousseau's cult of the primitive and Voltaire's celebration of reason, wept alongside Voltaire at the Académie Royale, and cultivated Parisian salons with the same calculated charm he had deployed in London drawing rooms. At the critical meeting with Voltaire, the two men embraced and were compared by observers to Solon meeting Sophocles. Edmund Burke condemned Franklin's Paris sojourn as 'a foul and dishonorable flight'; Tom argues it was one of the most consequential diplomatic missions in history. When he finally signed the Treaty of Alliance with France, Franklin chose to wear the same blue Manchester velvet coat he had worn when humiliated at the Cockpit, telling those who asked that he wore it 'to give it a little revenge.' Historian Edmund Morgan called the eventual 1783 Treaty of Paris the greatest diplomatic victory the United States has ever achieved.
Franklin served as America's first ambassador to a foreign power, spending 9 years in France where he secured French military and financial backing for American independence.
Franklin deliberately wore the same blue Manchester velvet coat at the signing of the Treaty of Alliance with France that he had worn when humiliated before the British Privy Council, saying he wore it 'to give it a little revenge'.
The historian Edmund Morgan described the 1783 Treaty of Paris, led by Franklin, as the greatest diplomatic victory the United States has ever achieved.
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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