Scurvy killed sailors for lack of limes, which is why the British are called 'limeys.' Sick sailors were stored in the lower hold to get them 'under the weather.' And silent film directors begged editors to 'cut to the chase' past boring romance scenes.
Where this was said
At 31:23 · chapter starts 30:38
Shane has been captivated by The Wager, a popular history book about a British naval expedition sent to attack a Spanish port in Chile — a mission that goes catastrophically wrong, with scurvy ravaging the crew one horrifying chapter at a time. The scurvy discussion leads to a compact etymology session [1] — Shane Gillis "Scurvy killed sailors for lack of limes, which is why the British are called 'limeys.' Sick sailors were stored in the lower hold to get th…" 31:23 : British sailors were called 'limeys' because the Navy issued limes to prevent scurvy; sick sailors kept 'under the weather' were placed in the lower hold out of the elements; and 'cut to the chase' comes from early silent film directors who demanded skipping the obligatory boring romance scenes to get to the chase sequences. Shane acknowledges that he read the 'under the weather' origin in a book and can't fully verify it, which is honest enough. Matt's reaction: 'that's good.'
The phrase 'under the weather' originated from sailors putting sick crew in the lower hold to get them out of the weather.
The phrase 'cut to the chase' came from the silent film era, when a director demanded skipping drawn-out romance scenes to get to the chase sequence.
British sailors were called 'limeys' because the Royal Navy issued limes to prevent scurvy caused by vitamin C deficiency on long voyages.
Matt calls Shane a landlubber. Shane fights back, citing a Carnival Cruise at 14 and daily swimming laps. Then Shane immediately admits he's a landlubber who has never been at sea for more than a day — crushing his own argument.
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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