The Packard team drove into one western town just after a murder — and the entire crowd, including the sheriff, abandoned the fresh crime scene to stare at the car. Nobody out west had ever seen one before.
Where this was said
At 33:23 · chapter starts 32:20
The western leg of the journey reads like a compendium of everything that could go wrong. The Cascade Mountains presented cliff-side roads barely wide enough for one vehicle, shared with stagecoaches and horses, with no room for error. The brakes were inadequate for steep descents; the clutch failed repeatedly and Crocker repaired it over and over again. When they ventured onto railroad right-of-ways — often the only flat, clear surface available — they drove across railroad bridges in an open car topping out at 30 mph, hoping no train was coming (an experience Josh compared to the famous bridge scene in Stand By Me). Locals, rarely having seen a car, were unreliable guides: one woman on horseback deliberately misdirected Jackson and Crocker down a dead-end driveway miles long, just so her family could see an automobile. They came back, met her again, asked why, and heard the cheerful explanation — and apparently accepted it without anger. On their worst day, the block and tackle was deployed 18 times to free the car from mud, ditches, and rivers [1] — Chuck "Block and tackle used 18 times in one day: On their worst day, Jackson and Crocker had to use their block-and-tackle pulley system 18 times…" 34:43 .
On their worst day, Jackson and Crocker had to use their block-and-tackle pulley system 18 times to drag the car out of ditches, rivers, and mud holes. That one piece of gear, more than almost anything else, kept the trip alive.
On their worst day, Jackson and Crocker had to use their block-and-tackle pulley system 18 times in a single day to pull their car out of ditches, rivers, and mud holes.
A woman on horseback gave Jackson and Crocker confident directions — straight down a dead-end driveway to her family's farm. They were miles in before they realized it. Her reason: her family had never seen a car and she wanted to give them a look.
Kierkegaard lost five of six siblings and his mother before adulthood, grew up under a shame-ridden father, fell in love, proposed, then mailed back the ring and fled to Berlin. His inability to live up to his own most important commitment became the engine of his entire philosophical project.
Casanova escaped from Venice's inquisition prison, met Voltaire, Catherine the Great, Benjamin Franklin, and Mozart — then died completely alone in a Slovak castle, broke, telling stories to children who thought he was a crazy old man. His 2,000-page memoir sat unread for decades. A life full of fireworks that meant nothing.
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.
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