John Wayne was 62 years old when he tried to portray a fit Vietnam War Green Beret colonel, but the obvious age gap isn't the only head scratcher in this film. Released in 1968, the film was Lyndon B. Johnson-approved attempt to shift American...
Yesterday
The AI Jobs Panic of the 1890s: The Linotype Triggered Fears of Mass Layoffs but Created an Explosion in Newspaper Work
One of the most feared inventions ever was the Linotype machine. Debuting in 1886, it was designed to eliminate tens of thousands of newspaper jobs, specifically the hand-compositors—the highly skilled workers who painstakingly picked individual metal letters out of wooden trays ... Show More
57m 59s
Aug 11
April 1945 in Berlin: The Final Month of the Third Reich
When Heinrich Himmler was appointed to command the army group defending Berlin in January 1945, his operations officer described briefing him as "talking about colors with a blind man." Himmler couldn't read a map scale, worked five hours a day due to chronic stomach problems, an ... Show More
1h 1m
Aug 6
Writing Was Invented for Accounting and Scrawled on Baboon Bones
A three-inch baboon bone bearing twenty-nine deliberate incisions was pulled from a South African mountain range in 1970. It is approximately 43,000 years old, and microscopic analysis shows the notches were made over time with different cutting tools, meaning someone was trackin ... Show More
54m 26s
Oct 2024
508. America in '68: Nightmare in Vietnam (Part 1)
"Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.”
On the night of Sunday, 31st of March 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson, after announcing an end to the bombing of North Vietnam, stunned the world by revealing he would not seek the democratic nomination fo ... Show More
1h 13m
Aug 2024
177. The Vietnam War: Lyndon Johnson, Americanisation, and Operation Rolling Thunder
With the death of JFK, Lyndon B. Johnson took over the Presidency and immediately had to wrestle with America’s relationship with Vietnam after the killing of Diem. Right from the start he prophesised that it would be his downfall and so it was. He consistently resented it and th ... Show More
56m 57s
Dec 2024
How the Vietnam War Broke Our Trust in Government
December 1, 1969. Millions across America are tuned in to the same TV broadcast. They see a bland stage with some government workers behind desks. But there's also a large, plastic container filled with small blue capsules. In each of these capsules, a birth date. The order in wh ... Show More
23m 56s
Aug 2024
178. The Vietnam War: Nixon, Vietnamisation, and the Fall of Saigon
With Richard Nixon now in the White House and not wanting to have his presidency consumed by Vietnam like his predecessor’s was, he begins to search for ways to disentangle America from the war. It begins with Vietnamisation and an attempt to reduce South Vietnamese reliance on t ... Show More
55m 13s