Citation Needed - Charles Lindbergh

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. At the age of 25 in 1927, he went from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame by winning the Orteig Prize for making the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris on May 20–21. Lindbergh covered the 33+1⁄2-hour, 3,600-statute-mile (5,800 km) flight alone in a purpose-built, single-engine Ryan monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Though the first non-stop transatlantic flight had been completed eight years earlier, this was the first solo transatlantic flight, the first transatlantic flight between two major city hubs, and the longest transatlantic flight by almost 2,000 miles. Thus it is widely considered a turning point in world history for the development and advancement of aviation, ushering in a new era of transportation between parts of the globe. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

I mean, it's cute. I just don't get where it's all going. It's going to be the multiverse of madness. I told you. Okay, yeah, right, right. But what is the multiverse of madness? I don't know, but it sounds cool. Does it? No, it doesn't. Ah! Jesus! Are you ill? I can't help it! What are you doing out?

Fuck! S saving my child. Correct, correct, correct. Where did you get these handcuffs? Police station, let's me keep them sometimes. There. All right, now I've got all of you. Hey Cecil, you know, what's up? Oh, he tied you guys up too?

Well, okay, yeah, he did. We were fair, he told me in time we were going to a restaurant called handccoff. So yeah, in retrospect, why would they do that there? It just seems like I thought exactly that at the time. I didn't want to be that guy who said it. The guy who said it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy said it. The guy who said it. The time has come for you to know why I am still talking. I'm still talking. I just don't want you to think that yelling like that is going to make me stop talking. So I can talk whenever I want. You can yell, but I'm still talking. That's very important to me. I agree. He's what, but Eli, why did you tie

us all up because of the before show? Shenanigans. Okay. What about him? This week's episode. It's about Charles Lindbergh and you guys were gonna kidnapped and murder my baby for the before show shenanigans. Shoo! Seriously? Yeah, absolutely was not. No one was gonna do that.

Eli, look, first of all, you're the only one who does the before show shenanigans. And two, none of us would kidnap and murder your baby before show shenanigans and two none of us would kidnap and murder your baby before show shenanigans are supposed to be funny and that's super duper not funny. It's not. No dude. Yeah man, not even like a podcast joke style. It's not hilarious.

So I could have just like turned the studio into an airplane or something. Sure. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I prefer you wouldn't, but yeah, I guess. like turn the studio into an airplane or something. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I mean, I prefer you wouldn't, but yeah, I guess. Oh, okay. But let me, let me uncuff you guys. I'm sorry.

Hey, okay. So while we're on the subject of leaving families out of the show, I think it's a good idea because it's just like, oh, we're a thing to do. Are we all gonna stop joking about fucking my mom? Cause that would be the same role. No, no, no, no, no. Cause that is super duper funny. Oh, that's genuinely hilarious. It, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Hello and welcome, Citation Needed.

Podcast where we choose a subject, create a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Heath and I'll be your pilot and I'm joined by the regular crew, but first let's welcome our platinum skylines members. Okay, and our gold skylines. And silver, bronze,

pewter, copper, great, active duty military, cool, lazy military, but I've been to getting a thousand, so I'm getting military veterans, great. Okay, yeah. Anybody who did ROTC, and people with babies go fuck yourself. Yeah, cool. And now please welcome Tom. People with babies go fuck yourself, wait, cool. And now please welcome Tom.

People with babies go fuck yourself. Wait, you need a baby to masturbate on the plane? Now that's faster. Right, gross. Why do they give you blankets? Tom has gone now and now please welcome group one. Okay, and now people lying about their group. What?

What? Two and three, cool. And now that Greek Orthodox priest right there and that rabbi from a joke premise, apparently, they're together Cecil and Eli. I just wear the vestment so I could smuggle Nero's on the coach. That's okay.

Yeah, that's a good one. It's okay Cecil, you can go. I boarded with my baby right after I fucked myself. So everybody hates you. Cool. And, alright, I guess that drug dealer who's walking funny can go now. No is here.

Yeah, yeah, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't spend more money to be on the plane longer. Yeah, gotta scoot by while you look disappointed about how jealous I'm not. Okay. Alright, Noah, what person-placed thing concept phenomenon or event? Are we going to be talking about today? Charles Lindbergh.

Fantastic. And would you like to make any announcements for the record about why you chose that topic? If you'll recall, the last essay I wrote was about Henry Ford, which Eli was kind of enough to read for me. So I guess this is part of my bigoted assholes from the 1920s series. Oh, that's a fun series. Right.

So to be clear, for big chunks of the essay, it's going to seem like Charles Lindbergh is the hero. He's not. He was a fucking Nazi. Right. So we'll get to the Nazi should eventually sort of tack it on the Dan, but I want to make it clear up front that nobody should get too attached to this guy.

Yeah, don't get too attached is also incidentally he's Tinder bio. So it's not worth. So who was Charles loaded? Actually, you know, I want to start with who he wasn't. Okay. So Charles Lindbergh was not the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean from the American continent to Europe. He wasn't the first person to do it non-stop even that honor goes to John Alcock and Arthur Witt and Brown who managed it in June of 1919. They flew from the Easternmost point they could get to in Newfoundland to like a few inches into Ireland.

Nice. inches into Ireland. Nice. And I say to rather than they land it in because there's somewhat controlled crash into an Irish bog doesn't really rise to the level of landing it, but they survived it. But still, it was a fantastically daring accomplishment and it got the whole world excited about the possibilities of aviation. There's a weird time skip in airplanes. Like, like, there's a time when everyone was like, I hear men can ride in an aeroplane for a full American hour. And then 40 seconds later, my flight to China was 18 minutes late. I fucking hate flying. It's the word.

Yeah, I feel like. All right. So now one of the people who got really swept up at this new aviation craze was a guy named Raymond or T. He was a wealthy French born hotel. You're in New York and he saw a good opportunity for self promotion here. So he announced a $25,000 award for the first successful non-stop flight between New York City and Paris France. Would there somebody who did like multiple stops? city and Paris France. Was there somebody who did like multiple stops? Oh, yeah.

So like, like sea planes would land along the way several times and shut like that to make that's a layover in the Atlantic. Exactly. All right. So or tea called this the orteague prize and he said it would run for five years. And of course, this is 1919. So like 25 grand is a ton of money, well over a quarter of a million dollars today.

But the trip Alcock and Brown had just barely pulled off. That's about 1900 miles. The flight or TIG was talking about would be damn near twice that far, 3600 miles. So when the offer expired five years later, there had been no serious attempts to claim the prize. Now of course, in the intervening five years, aviation technology had gotten a lot better. So, or take decided to renew the prize for another five years, and this time a bunch of contenders started to step forward and then die because flying 3600 miles in a rickety

lawn mower plane was still bad shit, fucking crazy. So the first was a French flying ace named Bernet Funk and his airplane crashed on takeoff in September of 1926. distance wasn't really the issue there then was it was it was it was wait but you know because of the distance so in April of 1927 two American aviators named Noel Davis and Stanton Wouster were killed while testing the planet they were going to use for the flight. And a few weeks later, a couple of French war heroes, Charles Nungauser and Francois

Cole became the first people to actually make it farther than the end of the runway, but they disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean and were never heard of this guy. You would think that at this point, or TIG would withdraw the prize and say, oh, shit, my bad. I didn't mean to get a bunch of people killed. But he knew there was no such thing as bad publicity. So he kept promoting the hell out of it. Well, apparently this is legal. So I would like to announce my million dollar prize for any Republican senator who can beat up 10 cobra snakes with firematch. You're right, you fuck that. Now, so it was startin' with like somebody

might actually manage to claim this price. In fact, much to the media's chagrin, it actually looked like there might be a race. See, or take never stipulated which way you had to go. You could go Paris to New York, you could go New York to Paris. But the prevailing weather patterns on the planet kinda dictated that you have to start in New York

and go east otherwise you're gonna be fighting the wind the whole time. And there's no way you could carry enough fuel for that. Noon Gaster's team actually ignored that fact. And as soon as they did, everybody who knew anything about aviation wrote them off. But so the only place in New York with a runway long enough was an airstrip called Roosevelt Field in Long Island. So that's where all the serious pilots were amassing. And in May of 1927,

three planes were just waiting for favorable weather reports to take off. All right, so one of the contenders was an already famous aviator named Clarence Chamberlain who flew in circles around Long Island long enough to set the world aviation endurance record. Yeah, that is a record since beaten regularly by passengers on Delta on a routine Thursday trying to land a Jeff.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, go to work. Even if you're going to New York City, go to Newark. Yeah, I could agree. Actually, don't let Eli pick you up. That would be worse. Yeah, everything. It's safe.

All right. So Chamberlain's team was financed by a guy named Charles Levine who had very deep pockets, but managed to piss off pretty much everybody who ever came into contact with him in all of history. The second guy is a famous art to explore and a Richard bird who either was the first man to ever fly over the North Pole and did it in record time from base camp that still to this day has never been bested or he lied about flying over the North Pole and did it in record time from base camp that still to this day has never been bested or he lied about flying over the North Pole. And he actually like took a much shorter flight that just kind of went around the Arctic

ocean a little bit. The third guy was some fucking nobody asked barnstormer named Charles Lindbergh. Now Lindbergh stood out from the competitors in a couple of ways. He was the only one of the three that wasn't famous going into it. He was also the only guy who didn't have some big money finance here. And the fact that he actually had a plane cable and making this flight, it always a bit of a miracle. But most importantly, in terms of actually flying across the Atlantic,

he was the only one without a team. Chamberlain and Bird were bringing navigators along with him and Bird also had a radio operator. Charles Lindberg was the only person even attempting to do this shit by himself. Now, nobody knew much about Lindbergh before he showed up in Roosevelt field, but the New York media did a pretty solid job flesh and things out once he announced he was going for the ortee prize. Lindbergh was born in Detroit in 1902, but he grew up in Minnesota.

He dropped out of college a few years earlier to pursue aviation, but he didn't actually fit that sort of typical stereotype of a daredevil pilot. He did crazy aerial stunts with the best of them, including insane shit like wing walking and stuff. But when he was on the ground, he was as clean cut and buttoned down as any fucking buddy. He didn't drink. He didn't smoke and by the age of 25 as Neuros anybody can tell he'd never even been on a date. And then what is it? by the age of 25 as Nura's anybody can tell he'd never even been on a date. And no one knows what happens to his wife. Yeah, right.

I was going to have a lane with him. Just like someone touched my penis. Now, of course, this is 1927, right in the middle of prohibition and the height of the temperance movements, power. So that made this T totaler a really popular contender in a lot of newspaper buying households. So obviously the media is selling this shit hard. All the contenders were in the same place at the same time. They're just waiting for several days of hard rain to clear up.

It's been all a two weeks since the last contenders died or since they called off the search parties. And as near as anybody can tell, as soon as the rain clears, all three of these guys are going to take off in quick succession and then we'll have a race to Paris. But that is not how it ended up happening. Oh, okay. I was definitely picture. I was picturing like Mario Kart. So, okay. So it turns out that Robert Bird really didn't want to do this shit at all. Okay, he was the fake guy to begin with. He was just soaking up the media adulation. He's living it up in a, as a famous dude and a well financed student in New York City. He was happy to just keep making excuses as long as he could get away with it. Around the time it looked like the weather was going to clear, actually, he said a date like

a week later to officially christen his plane, so he was not gonna race anybody. All right, so Chamberlain's team was a bit more serious about giving this a go, but while they're making their last second tweaks and waiting for the storm to break, Charles Levine shows up with contracts for him and his team and they are nowhere near what they'd been discussing up to that point. So Levine is drawn up these basically indentured, servant contracts where he gets to keep every penny they ever make for speaking towards book sales appearances, whatever, and then he'll pay them, you know, reasonable salary for a couple of years in exchange.

What's more, he's been promising a big chunk of money to the families if the team doesn't make it, right? If they're playing crashes like every other damn buddy who tries this, there's nothing about that in the contract that Levine shows up with. He got plus he made them check their bags at the gate. You have the right amount of overhead bins for bags. What is right? The combined group four.

What is that even mean? It's just me. That's crazy. And they overlooked some hide and see that coming on this. Yeah. How are you right? So okay. So Chabrelin and his navigator tell the bean that they're not going anywhere

until he rewrites the contracts and makes them look like he said they'd look, he tells them they're fucking fired and he'll find different pilots. Damn it. So Chamberlain sews his ass and then a judge grounds the plane until they can sort out all their legal troubles. And that means all taken together that when favorable weather reports finally show up on the night of May 19th, Charles Lindbergh is the only one ready to go. And yada yada yada, he stole his own baby. Cool. Before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break.

Good morning, the gentlemen, it's time for another fantastic day here in Mima, Wicca Patta, where another group of this nation's finest inventors have gathered to show off the newest and flying technology. That's right, Cleveland, which was a people name at this time. First up, we've got Smith and Jones, he haunt Billy and their double propeller. I walk one direction on the propeller. And I walk the other. Fantastic gentlemen, good luck.

And of course, here's the beloved Professor Smitherson field from the local college. I put a rocket on a bicycle. You sure dead end, of course, the underdog and the town favorite, that loveable loaf who can't help but win your hard flaps McGee what's your plan this year flaps? I'm just gonna flap my arms real hard. Yes, you are flaps. Yes, you are alright gentlemen on the count of three one

two three And they're all dead Yes, they are Cleveland. Yes, they are AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH And we're back. And we left off the preface intro and a log where really he- No. So are we into the numbered pages now? No, no.

No, no. And we will never get there. Heath, you should know this about me by the time I'm like, no, I am like, if the front matter was a guy, right? Okay, we're going to split straight from all of that shit to the outro. Okay, after all the hype and the repeated weather delays, the sky finally cleared for a transatlantic flight on Friday, May 20th of 1927. In the early morning hours, Charles Lindbergh climb into the cockpit of his plane, the spirit of St. Louis. Now,

that probably seems like a weird name for a plane that was built in San Diego and flown by a guy from Detroit who grew up in Minnesota. But Lindbergh lived in St. Louis at the time and his financial backers to the extent that he had any were from a racquet club in St. Louis. Part of the way he convinced him to give him money was by appealing to their civic pride about like, you know, how good would it be for the city? If every news story about this accomplishment had the words St. Louis in them, it's crazy that the plane flew because I always thought the spirit of St. Louis was broken. Yeah.

And spirit. So eventually, yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, he and I are confused, but just happily fundraising at the reclet club. I know that you're all cheesy. Yeah. The club is so fucking good. So, okay, speaking of which, unless you've actually seen a picture of this plane up close,

whatever you're imagining is more substantial than the actual plane. Okay. So the spirit of St. Louis was a single engine monoplane, meaning it had one set of wings instead of the more common at the time too. And like pretty much all the decisions made in this plane's design, the decision to go with a monoplane was all about weight. Okay, one set of wings is lighter than two. For the same reason the plane was mostly made out of lightweight wood covered in fabric. Right, so if you imagine a box kite with a propeller on the front of it, you're frighteningly fucking close.

So actually, so they went to so much trouble keeping the weight down that Lindbergh famously trimmed the useless white borders off the maps that he was going to use far more importantly, he refused to take a radio since they were heavy, unreliable and hard to use when flying. The fuck would a radio do anyway? Send out. Sure. Yeah.

Give us a few years. We'll build the Pride of St. Louis and we'll send it right out. Okay. You know what happens when you don't have a radio seesaw? 200 years of looking for Amelia Earhart. That's what. Okay. She had a radio.

She was eaten by lobster assidies. That's a real theory, by the way. Yeah. Come on. It's not. It is. It's a real theory, by the way. Yeah, come on, it's not. It is, it's a great grandma. She's trust. Real story, my great grandmother had a bunch of sex with Amelia Earhart, like a bum. What am I supposed to say?

Dang it out. Fun fact. That is so super fun fact. Rack in Amelia Earhart. Just like that. All right, so the spirit of St. Louis was a custom built plane for this particular job by a company out of California called Ryan air, which was apparently on the verge of bankruptcy in Lindbergh first contact.

The more things change, you might write everybody. Yeah, fun fact, Charles Lindbergh had to buy two seats just like me. Yeah, it's a different Ryan air. But yeah, okay. And I was getting close to fitting into one seat. It was, it was a good, good one. It was fun to watch and you try, though. So and because he had trouble putting the money together, it was built as a rush job. So the manufacturer originally said it would take three months, but Lindbergh said, you

know, he only had two. This obviously resulted in a lot of design compromises. So like they started with a plane that Ryanair already made, and they just kind of beefed it up with longer wings, struggle wheel struts, bigger fuel tanks and shit. But they didn't have time to redesign the tail assembly, which meant, and I'm just gonna quote the wiki here, quote,

this setup resulted in a negatively stable design that tended to randomly introduce unanticipated pitch, yaw, and bank elements." And quote, and well, it's disputed the story that I've always seen attached to this is that when they told Charles Lindbergh about that, he said, no, that's a good thing. All that unexpected fidgeting over the plane will keep me awake. I get it. That's why I always drive Heath's car on long trips. Yeah. Yeah. So most people brag about the torque of their truck or whatever, but how much fucking yaw does your truck run the meal? Also, so it would be hard to overstate how fucking nuts it was that he was doing this

shit solo. Okay. So Lindbergh figured a whole extra guy. That's a lot of extra weight, plus he'd be taking up space to get otherwise hold more fuel, but it's not like he could put the fucking thing on autopilot here, planes back then couldn't level themselves.

Right, so he couldn't take his hands off the stick any longer than you could take your hands off the wheel of your car. So on top of all that, it's not like they were like, you know, signs he can follow along the way here. He had to plot his course on the fly with that reckoning. Right? Like so, like I've been going this direction for this long. It's about such a much of a amount of windy, so I should be about here. Okay. She had to do that shit while flying the fucking plane. At night, he'd have to spread the map out on his lap, hold a flashlight in his mouth, plot the course with his hands and like hold the plane study by pinching the control stick

between his knees. Cool. Oh man, but that's nothing though. I once saw a guy eat an entire bowl of fettuccine Alfredo and a separate side salad with breadsticks while driving a stick shift. That guy was heathed. That was heathed. Yeah.

He's the one I was waiting to get credited there. Yeah, I think we all learned something about promising someone endless anything that I'm gonna test that out. That's how it's more like living in all of a sudden. Yeah. So I also need to emphasize how small the cockpit was still perfectly satisfying though. Let's not forget that. It's just made it into history. It was very, very small. Um, the area he had to fit into. Still a hero. Three feet wide.

32 inches deep. 51 inches high. We give dead people more space than that when we bury them. They would be like trying to fly across the Atlantic and encode, actually. I guess that was a giant of 84 years. Be fair, he did get to pick his seat without paying for it though. So no, no, no seat. Oh, and so actually speaking of one of seats, one of their weird work about this

plane, it had no forward visibility. Seems like the direction the plane goes. It is, it's the yep, most of the time when things are going the way you went, you know, there's some unanticipated yaw now and again, but mostly you're going for it. There was no wind shield or anything. He, so he could see his instruments and what was out either window on the side. Okay. So we had window technology for the sides.

Yeah. So we couldn't make it forward. Well, there was a really good reason for it in terms of putting a field. They didn't have enough telephone books for him to sit on. He was, well, that's part of the. So, well, so they didn't want to put a fuel tank in front of it so that if he crashed, he would definitely explode. And that actually forced him to change the angle of the plane to get it to take off.

A bunch of weird shit there. But the end result of it is the only way that he could see what was in front of him at all was by the use of a little periscope. It stuck out of the top. Now, he figured that wasn't going to be much of a problem since, you know, the ocean kind of all looks the same. It's probably blue out there, but it made landing a lot tricky. Yeah. Yeah, I would.

Uh, uh, Chuck, did you just fire a torpedo at my runway? Yeah, I don't think like the view is the reason to have visibility. Like, oh, it's not all that attractive looking anyway. Nobody would fly into newer otherwise. Now, so it'll all his flight would take about 33 and a half hours. And by all accounts, the most harrowing part was to take off. So even with every spare gram of weight shed, the overloaded plane barely managed to get airborne before it ran out of runway. And it only cleared a few telephone wires at the end of the runway by a couple of feet.

Okay. When did we invent the runway technology called longer? Maybe it's longer. Maybe we don't have that. technology called longer. Later than we invented the technology of not putting elevated wires at the end of the year. How did you get a lot of fucking phone at that point? Just cut them off. That's just nine guys.

All right, so, but also, so along the way, there are a couple of opportunities for official outpost to see him. And that was, you know, because he had no radio, that was the only way anybody knew anything about his progress uh... and you know there's not a lot of airplanes in the sky so it's pretty obvious which one is his uh... he was cited in newfoundland right on schedule and then again just south of irland so by the time he's getting close to paris news is already spreading that somebody's about to claim the ortee prize and for whatever reason

peries and scott's super excited about that idea so hauled ass to the airport to greet him when he got there. So around 10 pm local time, Lindbergh makes to Paris, but he doesn't know exactly where the airport is. It's not marked on the map. And while he's got a pretty good idea where it should be, what do you see on the ground doesn't match up with what he's expecting to see. What was the invading grenade? I just put that on the book. Right down the landing spot.

I mean, that seems like you would think one of two things you would have on the way that I'm down with an axe. That's the thing. Exactly. There. So okay, so here's the air strips of the time were like, you know, they weren't part of some gigantic airport complex. It's a little dirt strip, a little ways out of town.

And it has just enough light shed over it to make it visible from the sky at night. But the area that he's expecting to find an airport in was lit up like daylight with huge streams of light spanning out in every direction. Turns out that is the airstrip and the huge stream of light are the headlights of the biggest traffic jam in world history to that point from where everybody in the damn country was trying to get to the airstrip in time to see Landberg land. He lands on the car at the front of the line. What did I tell you? That's seen the house, right? Yeah, that's a girl.

All right. So once he confirms he's in the right place at 10, 22 PM on May 21st, he brings the spirit of St. Louis and for a landing. And because people don't really like get airplanes quite yet, but 150,000 adoring fans rushed on to the runway to greet him while he's still landing. Remember, he's got one periscope's worth of power visibility. And according to the limber's account, he never actually used that thing. It was kind of useless. And so he didn't bother with it. So the fact that he didn't mow anybody down with a propeller in his landing is apparently

just a bit of a coincidence. Yeah, the guy up there at the $25,000, like fine, I guess the body kind of have to stay at seven. No sooner has to plan to come to a halt than the mob of adoring fans. Pulse the motherfucker out of the cockpit starts carrying them towards the hanger. The damage to shit out of his plane too. So somebody acts and others in deliberate attempts to snatch a bit of fabric off of it as a souvenir. Okay.

Lots of urine on all that. We do. He's just hovering in your own right? And so not sure why the Wiki authors felt they need to point this out by the way, but among the group that greeted Lindbergh, were two future prime ministers of India, Jawaharlal Nuru and his daughter Indira Gandhi.

Ha! Okay, so yeah, right, fun fact. All right, so Lindbergh instantly became a businely famous. According to the New York Times Front Page article at the time, people were quote, behaving as to Holenberg had walked on water, not blown over it end quote. That's kind of bitchy. I got to say it was a little fancy. So New York Times was so much bitchy or back then. So by the following day, his mother's house in Detroit was surrounded

by a crowd of more than a thousand people. So that same day, the French foreign office, flew the American flag. Apparently, that was the first time they'd ever saluted somebody who wasn't ahead of state. On the east side of the Atlantic, he was given the French Legion don't honor by the French president. On the west side, he was given the distinguished flying cross by the American one. Congress won up that past a special act that allowed Lindbergh to be awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic achievement. And time magazine made him the first ever man of the year. Actually, at age 25, he remains the youngest person to ever receive that honor. All right. So for the rest of the year, Lindbergh toured around

the U.S. attending banquets and parades in his honor. According to the wiki between July 20th and October 23rd of 1927, he visited 82 cities in 48 states. That was all of them at the time. He delivered 147 speeches and he wrote 1290 miles in parades. It's estimated that 30 million Americans actually saw him in the flesh during that period. The entire population of the country at that time was 119 million. Jesus Christ. So over a quarter of the people and by all accounts, he fucking hated every fucking second of it. Turned out, he despised being famous.

He was nervous talking to women. He got super embarrassed when people asked how he peed while he was on his flight and everybody asked how he peed when he was on it. Yeah, I know. Actually, I drank it straight back down through a tube that was what it no I fucking peed myself I'm sorry we can ask now okay like if you didn't want to be famous why the fuck did he do the flight then yeah I'm sorry you did 33 hours in a baby coffin and it was the only way you could think of to make 25 grand okay fair questiony like but since Charles Lindbergh isn't around to ask it,

we could just ask Noah basically the same question about live shows. It was supposed to be a podcast. I was gonna do this for my closet. All right, so it was, it was during this tour that he met his future wife and Maro, who was apparently his financial advisor's daughter, one of the partners at JP Morgan, stupid fucking rich obviously.

So the couple would ultimately have six children, only one of which would be kidnapped and murdered. So that's actually a pretty good average. I think Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck? What the fuck? What the hell is this? So but the tragic death of his 20 month old name, say, only made him despise his fame

all the more. So clearly he moved around in Europe for a while trying to find a place where nobody knew him, but ultimately he found a way to get rid of all those adoring crowds even in his home country. And that was by publicly throwing in with the Nazis. Now we really need to emphasize just how hard it was to be too racist for mainstream America. All right,. I know it's illegal to teach kids about that in some states now or whatever, but America was profoundly bigoted back then. And I mean, like compared to how bigoted it is today, but Linberg's public address for non-involvement in the Second World War and an infamous radio address that suggested that

Hitler might be on to something with this whole white people are the super duper better race. That was enough to turn the majority of Americans against him even back that places that had been renamed after him in 1927 and there were quite a few suddenly remembered what their old names were. Nobody had parades in his art. This is our general. That's great. Yeah.

Right. Right. And of course, no throngs of adoring fans would ever greet him at another airstrip. We don't even want to steal anymore of your stupid kids racist. We know you did it. We know he definitely did it. He definitely did it 100%. So okay, but he had more than just sympathies for German attitudes towards race. It turns out, uh, barely he also had a bunch of German kids. While Mary to Ann, he had multiple long-term relationships with at least three other women in Germany.

He had no one. He started his own master race. Jesus Christ. Yeah, no, he had three kids by one woman, two each by with two others that we know of, right? That's just the ones we know about. This all happened after the war and it didn't come to light until after his death, but we're a long way towards undoing all that image, Mending, he didn't even with his environmental work in the 50s and 60s. It's, yeah.

All right. No, if you had summarized what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Antifa and cancel culture have been a problem way longer than many internet commenters realized. And are you ready for the quiz? No, but I will be in 33 and a half hours. All right. Noah, what tunes did Charles Lindbergh jam out to during his 33 hour flight?

Hey, fly like a much heavier and less visually acute eagle. He's between, it's fine. Who be in the sky with diamond? See baby come back. That's awesome. That's the one I had. It's kind of, yeah. Just pick that over it. So I've secreted answer D. Lindberger and Paradise. Yeah.

Nice. So good. All right, Noah, staying focused and attentive for 33 hours would be quite a challenge. How did Lindberger accomplish this? Hey, he bought cocaine from Heath's Great, Great grandfather. Oh, that's it. Okay. That's the end.

Well, so that's that's that's tempting, right? So as much as I love the visual image of trying to cut up lions and a bouncing ass airplane from 1927, I'm going to that's a trick. That's a trick because yes, he did buy. Okay, from Heath's great grandfather, but that's not how he stayed awake at the time. I'm going to go with secret answer B. He was a 25 year old virgin who probably never masturbated. So I feel like he was always at attention. And he, I don't need to use my knees to steer at all. Frog stick. Speaking of 25 year old virgin here, what's the name of the remarkably chased airline

that Lindbergh created? Oh, okay. A Virgin. That's a can of any. B, Continental. C, not so sleazy jet. D, South Vastal. Or E, Jet Blue Balls.

Don't worry, okay. All right, so I wanted to see if we can answer this one too, but there's no way I'm gonna compete with Jet Blue Balls, so I'm gonna go with E, Jet Blue Balls. Correct, it is correct. Excellent, Noah, you got to correct, you are the winner. Awesome, all right, well I want the next week's essay as to be seasonal.

Yes. All right, well for Tom Noah, Cecilini, Lai, I'm the next week's SA S2B CSO. Yes! Alright, well for Tom Noah, Cecil and Eli, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today, we'll be back next week and by then, Cecil, be an expert on something else. Doing now and then you can hear Tom and Cecil on Cognitive Disnance, and you can hear Eli know in myself on God off the movies, skating atheists, scapecrat and D&D minus. And if you're not a bad tipper who hates puppies, you can make a per episode doing it.

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check out say, patientpod.com. Yeah, my flight's been delayed for like 45 minutes now incredible. Alright, well it looks like we're finally taking off. I'll call you back. Flapp, flapp! That was my damn time, flap, flap.