DAVE: Welcome back to Touring History, the podcast where we learn that every day in the past was basically humanity playing a really complicated game of "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" I'm Dave.
LANE: And I'm Lane, and before we dive into today's collection of constitutional milestones and questionable German engineering projects, we need to talk about something that makes perfect sense in an imperfect world—Rückspiegel Specs™, the only eyewear that lets you see the past with 20/20 hindsight!
DAVE: You know, Lane and I have been doing this show long enough to realize that most historical disasters could have been prevented if people had just been able to see what was coming. Well, now they can.
LANE: Rückspiegel Specs™ use patented ChronoVision™ technology to show you exactly how your current decisions will look to future historians. Are you about to start a land war in Asia? Your Rückspiegel Specs™ will flash red. Thinking about building an unsinkable ship? The lenses will fog up with warning.
DAVE: Each pair comes with adjustable temporal settings. You can see 10 years into the future, 50 years, or go full "What will my great-grandchildren think of this?" mode. Perfect for politicians, military strategists, and anyone considering getting a face tattoo.
LANE: Which we're going to need today, because June 13th includes everything from constitutional rights to space exploration to some very questionable military technology. So grab your favorite prophetic eyewear—preferably Rückspiegel Specs™, available at foresight-eyewear-dot-com-slash-obvious-mistakes—and let's see what humanity accomplished on this particular day.
DAVE: Let's start with birthdays, because June 13th decided to give us a really interesting range of human achievement and... complexity.
LANE: Malcolm McDowell, born 1943, probably best known for playing Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange, which is either a brilliant dystopian masterpiece or the most disturbing movie ever made, depending on your perspective.
DAVE: McDowell has this ability to play characters who are simultaneously charismatic and terrifying. Alex DeLarge, the villain in Star Trek Generations who kills Captain Kirk—he's like the go-to guy when you need someone who's charming but also deeply unsettling.
LANE: It's a very specific acting skill. Most people can do "nice" or "evil," but McDowell specializes in "evil but you kind of want to have dinner with him anyway."
DAVE: And then we've got Chris Evans, born 1981, who went from playing a character literally called "the Human Torch" to playing Captain America, which is like career progression from "guy who's on fire" to "moral center of the universe."
LANE: Chris Evans as Captain America is interesting because he had to play someone who's genuinely good without being boring. That's harder than it sounds—moral perfection is usually terrible for drama.
DAVE: Right, Superman is boring because he's too perfect. But Evans managed to make Captain America feel like a real person who just happens to have unshakeable moral principles.
LANE: And speaking of people who built careers on being identical, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, born 1986.
DAVE: The Olsen twins basically invented the concept of "child star as business empire." They weren't just actresses; they were a brand that happened to be two people.
LANE: What's fascinating about the Olsen twins is that they figured out how to transition from child stars to actual businesspeople. Most child actors either disappear or have very public breakdowns. The Olsens just... became fashion moguls.
DAVE: It's like they looked at the traditional child star trajectory and said, "No thanks, we're going to become billionaires instead."
LANE: And finally, Tim Allen, born 1953, who built a career on being confused by modern life, which is basically the most relatable concept in entertainment.
DAVE: Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor was every dad who thought he could fix something but definitely could not fix that something. It was like a documentary about masculine overconfidence.
LANE: Alright, let's go chronological, starting with 1514 and the premiere of Verdi's Les vêpres siciliennes in Paris.
DAVE: Wait, hold on. Verdi wasn't born until 1813. He couldn't have premiered an opera in 1514.
LANE: [pause] You know what, Dave? You're absolutely right, and this is why we need Rückspiegel Specs™. I'm looking at my notes and realizing that someone made a typo that would have been caught by basic temporal logic.
DAVE: This is embarrassing. We're literally a history podcast, and we just tried to put Giuseppe Verdi in the 16th century.
LANE: Let's just acknowledge that 1514 was probably a significant year for something, but it wasn't Verdi operas, and move on to 1855, where we're on much firmer historical ground.
DAVE: 1855, a patent is granted for the Swan wick-filament invention, which enabled early gas lamp advertising.
LANE: Joseph Swan was working on incandescent lighting before Edison, which means he was basically trying to solve the problem of "how do we make light without fire?" which is a pretty fundamental human challenge.
DAVE: And the fact that this immediately led to advertising applications tells you everything you need to know about human priorities. "Great, we've invented artificial light! Now how can we use it to sell people things?"
LANE: It's like the first thing humans do with any new technology is figure out how to use it for marketing. We probably haven't even discovered aliens yet, and someone's already planning intergalactic advertising campaigns.
DAVE: Moving up to 1925, we get the first advertising of radio technology in mainstream press, with Jenkins Labs demonstrating their technology.
LANE: Charles Francis Jenkins was one of the pioneers of television broadcasting, and in 1925, he was basically trying to convince people that sending pictures through the air was a real thing and not magic.
DAVE: Imagine trying to explain television to someone in 1925. "So you're saying I can watch moving pictures that are happening somewhere else, transmitted through the air by invisible waves?" It sounds like a con game.
LANE: But Jenkins was smart enough to understand that new technology needs good marketing. You can invent the most amazing thing in the world, but if you can't explain why people should care, it doesn't matter.
DAVE: Now we're getting into some really important constitutional history. 1966, Miranda v. Arizona establishes "Miranda rights."
LANE: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." If you've ever watched a cop show, you know these words by heart.
DAVE: Ernesto Miranda was arrested for kidnapping and rape, and he confessed during police interrogation without being told he had the right to an attorney or the right to remain silent.
LANE: The Supreme Court ruled that confessions obtained without informing suspects of their rights are inadmissible in court. Which seems obvious now, but at the time, it was controversial.
DAVE: Law enforcement was like, "But how are we supposed to get confessions if we have to tell people they don't have to confess?" And the Supreme Court was like, "That's... kind of the point."
LANE: Miranda rights are one of those things that seem basic now, but they represent this fundamental principle that the government can't just do whatever it wants to you, even if you're accused of a crime.
DAVE: And then, the very next year, 1967, Thurgood Marshall is nominated as the first Black Supreme Court Justice.
LANE: Marshall had been arguing civil rights cases before the Supreme Court for decades. He was the lawyer who won Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal school segregation.
DAVE: So Marshall went from arguing cases in front of the Supreme Court to actually being on the Supreme Court, which is like going from trying to convince the teacher to change a grade to actually becoming the teacher.
LANE: Marshall served on the Court for 24 years and was consistently on the liberal side of civil rights issues. He was like the Supreme Court's moral conscience for a generation.
DAVE: And the fact that his nomination was controversial at the time—because some people thought a Black man shouldn't be on the Supreme Court—shows how recent these changes really are.
LANE: 1971, The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers, which is basically the moment when Americans learned that their government had been lying to them about Vietnam for years.
DAVE: The Pentagon Papers were a secret Defense Department study that showed the government knew the Vietnam War was unwinnable but kept escalating it anyway.
LANE: Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the papers, was a former Pentagon analyst who basically decided that the American people deserved to know what their government was doing in their name.
DAVE: The Nixon administration tried to stop the Times from publishing, arguing that it would damage national security. But the Supreme Court ruled that the government couldn't engage in "prior restraint" of the press.
LANE: This is one of those cases where "national security" was code for "this is really embarrassing for us politically." The papers didn't reveal troop movements or battle plans; they revealed that policymakers knew they were lying to the public.
DAVE: Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act and faced life in prison, but the charges were dropped because the government had illegally wiretapped him and broken into his psychiatrist's office.
LANE: So the government was so determined to prosecute the guy who revealed their lies that they broke the law to do it, which kind of proved his point about government overreach.
DAVE: The Pentagon Papers case established that the press has a right to publish classified information if it serves the public interest, which is a pretty fundamental principle of democratic accountability.
LANE: On a much more uplifting note, 1983, Pioneer 10 becomes the first human-made object to exit the Solar System.
DAVE: Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972 to study Jupiter, and then it just... kept going. NASA was like, "Well, we're done with the Jupiter mission, but the spacecraft is still working, so let's see what happens."
LANE: And what happened was that it became humanity's first ambassador to interstellar space. It's carrying a plaque with pictures of humans and a map showing where Earth is, just in case aliens find it.
DAVE: The plaque is fascinating because it's humanity trying to introduce itself to the universe. "Hi, we're humans, we live here, and we figured out how to build machines that can travel between stars."
LANE: Although, Pioneer 10 lost contact with Earth in 2003, so if aliens do find it, they're going to think we're a civilization that peaked in the 1970s and then disappeared.
DAVE: "These humans seemed promising. They had space travel and disco music. Wonder what happened to them?"
LANE: Pioneer 10 is still out there somewhere, moving through interstellar space at about 26,000 miles per hour, carrying a message from a planet that's changed completely since it left.
DAVE: It's like a time capsule that's also traveling to other stars. By the time aliens find it, humanity might be completely different, but they'll judge us based on what we were like in 1972.
DAVE: You know what, Lane? Speaking of messages that might be misunderstood by future civilizations, let's talk about Rückspiegel Specs™.
LANE: Oh no, Dave's about to explain why seeing the future is actually a solved problem that we just haven't been marketing properly.
DAVE: Look, we just talked about the Pentagon Papers, where government officials made decisions without considering how they'd look to future historians. That never would have happened if they'd been wearing Rückspiegel Specs™.
LANE: Rückspiegel Specs™ represent the ultimate in decision-making technology. Our patented ChronoVision™ lenses show you exactly how your choices will be judged by future generations.
DAVE: When you're considering starting a land war in Asia, bombing a neutral country, or getting involved in a trade war with your largest economic partner, Rückspiegel Specs™ will immediately show you how history textbooks will describe your decision.
LANE: Plus, and this is important for people who spend their time making questionable choices, Rückspiegel Specs™ come with adjustable temporal settings. You can see 10 years into the future, 50 years, or go full "How will this look in the history books?" mode.
DAVE: They're perfect for politicians, military leaders, and anyone who's ever thought, "How hard could it be?" The answer is: harder than you think, and Rückspiegel Specs™ will show you exactly how hard before you make the mistake.
LANE: So if you want to support the show and also avoid becoming a cautionary tale in future history podcasts, visit foresight-eyewear-dot-com-slash-obvious-mistakes. Rückspiegel Specs™: Because hindsight is 20/20, but foresight is priceless.
DAVE: Now back to our regularly scheduled historical chaos, which could have been prevented with proper eyewear.
LANE: Speaking of decisions that look terrible in hindsight, June 13th, 1944, Germany launches its first V-1 cruise missile attacks on London.
DAVE: The V-1 was nicknamed the "buzz bomb" because of the sound its pulse-jet engine made. Londoners learned to listen for the engine noise, because when it stopped, the bomb was about to hit.
LANE: Can you imagine living in a city where random robot planes are flying overhead, and you have to listen for engine sounds to know if you're about to die? It's like the world's worst video game, except it's real life.
DAVE: The V-1 was basically an early cruise missile—a pilotless aircraft packed with explosives that could be launched from occupied Europe and hit targets in Britain.
LANE: Hitler was obsessed with "wonder weapons" that would turn the tide of the war. The V-1, the V-2 rocket, jet aircraft—Germany was developing all this advanced technology while losing the war.
DAVE: It's like they were trying to science their way out of a strategic disaster. "Yes, we're surrounded and outnumbered, but what if we build robot bombs?"
LANE: The V-1 attacks killed about 6,000 people and wounded 18,000 more, but they didn't change the outcome of the war. They were just another way for a dying regime to inflict suffering on civilians.
DAVE: And the thing is, all the resources that went into building V-1s could have gone into building better tanks or fighter planes that might have actually helped Germany's military situation.
LANE: But that would have required admitting that the war was going badly, and totalitarian regimes aren't great at admitting mistakes.
DAVE: Speaking of admitting mistakes, 1977, James Earl Ray is recaptured after his prison escape.
LANE: We talked about Ray's escape on June 10th—he hid in a bread truck with six other prisoners and was on the run for three days.
DAVE: Three days! The man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. managed to stay free for a long weekend. It's like if you planned the perfect crime and then got caught because you stopped for gas and forgot you were supposed to be hiding.
LANE: Ray spent the rest of his life in prison, repeatedly trying to withdraw his guilty plea and claiming he was framed, which most historians don't believe.
DAVE: It's one of those cases where the conspiracy theories are more interesting than the actual facts, but the facts are pretty straightforward: Ray killed Dr. King and then spent the rest of his life trying to escape responsibility.
LANE: Moving into more recent history, 1996, the Freemen standoff ends in Montana.
DAVE: The Montana Freemen were a right-wing militia group that refused to recognize federal authority and holed up on a ranch for 81 days.
LANE: They were basically sovereign citizens who decided that the federal government was illegitimate and they didn't have to follow federal laws, which is a legal theory that works great until the FBI shows up.
DAVE: The standoff lasted almost three months, and it ended peacefully when the Freemen surrendered. Nobody was killed, which was actually pretty remarkable given how these situations usually go.
LANE: The Freemen case was one of those events that showed how domestic extremism was becoming a bigger problem in the 1990s. Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, the Montana Freemen—there was a pattern developing.
DAVE: It's like there was this growing movement of people who decided that the solution to political disagreement was armed resistance, which historically doesn't work out well for anyone.
LANE: And finally, 1989, the U.S. confirms that Syria used chemical weapons, which brings us into the modern era of international law and war crimes.
DAVE: Chemical weapons are banned under international law, specifically the Chemical Weapons Convention, because there's basically no way to use them that doesn't violate the laws of war.
LANE: They're indiscriminate—they kill civilians and combatants equally. They cause unnecessary suffering. And they can have long-term environmental effects that last for decades.
DAVE: Syria's use of chemical weapons in 1989 was part of a broader pattern of authoritarian regimes using banned weapons against their own people, which is like the ultimate violation of the social contract between governments and citizens.
LANE: The international response was... complicated. Everyone condemned it, but actually stopping it was much harder, which is the ongoing challenge of international law.
DAVE: You can make treaties that ban chemical weapons, but enforcing those treaties requires political will and military capability that isn't always there.
LANE: It's like having speed limits but no traffic cops. The law exists, but whether it's enforced depends on a lot of factors that have nothing to do with justice.
DAVE: So there you have it, June 13th: constitutional rights, space exploration, government lies, robot bombs, prison escapes, armed standoffs, and chemical weapons.
LANE: It's like someone took the entire spectrum of human achievement and failure and compressed it into 24 hours. We've got legal progress, scientific breakthroughs, and really questionable decision-making all happening simultaneously.
DAVE: And through all of it, people kept making decisions without thinking about how they'd look to future historians. Which brings us back to Rückspiegel Specs™, which could have prevented most of the problems we just discussed.
LANE: History is chaos, but proper eyewear could have made it much less chaotic. That's definitely our show's motto now.
DAVE: Next week, we're looking at June 20th, which apparently decided to be the day when everything happens at once, but with more baseball and fewer robot bombs.
LANE: Until then, remember that you're living through history right now, so try to make decisions that won't embarrass your great-grandchildren.
DAVE: But not V-1-buzz-bomb decisions or Montana-Freemen decisions. Maybe more like Pioneer-10 decisions.
LANE: I'm Lane.
DAVE: I'm Dave.
BOTH: And this has been Touring History.
DAVE: [fade out] Seriously though, if anyone invents actual Rückspiegel Specs™, please let us know. We'd like to see how this podcast looks in retrospect.
[TOTAL RUNTIME: Approximately 11-12 minutes]
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