Podbit · Empire: World History
Trauma occurs and recurs. Ken Burns lost his mother at 11 — and his father-in-law, an eminent psychologist, told him the films he makes are really about waking up his mother. Four million Americans were owned by other Americans in 1861. A group of people with the peculiar experience of being unfree in a free land — what do you think that does?
Juan Pujol García was a failed chicken farmer and hotel manager who was rejected by MI5 multiple times. So he walked into the German embassy, faked his devotion to the Third Reich, got trained as a Nazi spy, then walked back into the British embassy with credentials they couldn't refuse. He invented 27 fictional sub-agents, convinced Hitler that D-Day would land at Calais, and received decorations from both sides of the war.
In 1965, a voice actor missed a session, and LaFontaine — then still an engineer — stepped in to record radio spots for MGM's Gunfighters of Casa Grande. MGM loved it so much they bought the whole concept outright. Careers have been launched on less.
In the 1960s, film studios handled all their own promotion in-house — LaFontaine and producer Floyd Peterson were among the first to break that model by offering independent trailer production. They accidentally became 'disruptors' before the word existed, a fact that sends Josh into a Silicon Valley eye-roll.
Richard Bissell, an economics professor turned CIA operative, surveyed the Nevada desert by plane in 1955 and selected a desolate dry salt flat called Groom Lake as the perfect secret test site. Isolated by mountains and adjacent to the nuclear test site, it became Area 51 — the most consequential patch of classified real estate in American history.
The U-2 could fly at 70,000 feet — 13 miles high — making it seemingly untouchable. Then the Soviets shot one down over their own territory in 1960, blew up the Paris peace summit, and forced the US to rethink everything. Area 51 had to build something even better.
Flying higher and faster wasn't enough after the U-2 debacle. The A-12 Blackbird successor had to be invisible to radar, so engineers at Area 51 hoisted it on a pole and blasted it with every type of radar they could find. Workers were told the project didn't exist — even though they were standing inside it.
Bill Kaysing worked for the company that built the Saturn rockets, then spent years arguing NASA faked the Apollo 11 moon landing at a secret desert base. He was describing Area 51. And the bizarre part? The Apollo astronauts actually did train in the Nevada test site because the terrain resembled the moon's surface.
The moon-landing hoax theory didn't emerge in a vacuum. It arrived at the exact moment Vietnam, Watergate, and MKUltra had shattered public trust in government. When intelligence agencies are proven capable of mass deception, believing they faked the moon landing suddenly feels rational — not fringe.
Theo speculates that Blue Heelers might be Native American dogs. The internet immediately and bluntly responds: No. But the actual deep dive is fascinating — Plains Indian dogs pulled V-shaped wooden sleds called travois, the Salish wool dog was sheared like sheep for blankets, and the Xoloitzcuintli was used as a literal body heater by the Aztecs.
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