Podbit · Fin vs History
At Meteren in October 1914, Monty was shot in the right lung. British forces thought he was dead. A comrade then lay on top of him for hours absorbing sniper fire. He survived. This experience — lying helpless under bodies while the war calamity unfolded around him — is thought to have made Monty obsessively cautious about casualties for the rest of his career.
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At 30:00 · chapter starts 26:52
While ostensibly engaged to Lucy Mollin, Rommel begins an affair with Walburga Stemmer (immediately rechristened 'Val Burger' by the hosts) and fathers a daughter named Gertrude. He then returns to Lucy, marries her, and Val Burger dies young — which the hosts attribute largely to the indignity of being called Val Burger. The researcher's script typo — 'shot in the lung' rendered as something else — triggers the episode's longest and most anarchic tangent: a detailed discussion of a personal injury case involving a ferromagnetic butt plug, an MRI machine, and injuries sustained at the speed of sound. Producer Charlie produces the receipts. The hosts conclude, reasonably, that anyone wearing a butt plug to an MRI deserves whatever happens. The actual historical fact — that Montgomery was shot in the right lung at Meteren in October 1914 — is eventually confirmed.
During World War I, Montgomery was shot in the right lung at Meteren in October 1914; he survived under a corpse for hours while a comrade was shot on top of him by a sniper.
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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