Afleveringen
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The Late Night History podcast was created by writer and oral historian Matt Fratus in 2021. Each year (or season), Matt releases a new batch of episodes starring world-class guests who share their life story. In each episode we cover fascinating historical topics as we leverage each guest's experience and expertise.
This short video is an announcement featuring an update on new guests and new content for 2024.
Listen to the Late Night History podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/late-night-history/id1553678075
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Tonight’s guest is Rob Newson, a former Navy SEAL officer with nearly 30 years of military service.
On this episode, Rob and I discuss the highlights of his remarkable military career, as well as the important work he is doing with cancer and leading the fight alongside incredible organizations such as Task Force Dagger and Hunter Seven Foundation.
If you are searching for insight about military start-ups, this is the episode for you. Rob has personally led or participated within six separate new military organizations, including two national strategic planning elements, and a first-of-its-kind organization to collect and integrate battlefield intelligence to identify and disable terrorist networks. In a three year period, this new team elevated the success rate of SEAL missions from 35% to 91%.
We dive into the gamut of Naval Special Warfare history across the Global War on Terror, including the establishment of SEAL Team 7 and why all veterans of that team owe Rob a green beer for putting the commissioning date on St. Paddy’s Day. We also cover the reasoning for the creation of the Cultural Engagement Units, which relied heavily on the MAVNI program; and various other topics such as women in combat, SEALs in media, and working at the White House.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Tonight’s guest is Doug Patteson, a 10-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, or simply put, the CIA.On this episode we cover Doug’s fascinating ancestral family history of Texans, which include both his grandfather's military service in WWII. For the majority of the show, we discuss all things espionage, including Doug’s legendary mentors (like Dick Holm on episode 27), his three overseas tours, what it was like to recruit a spy, and his opinion on the greatest movies that capture the reality of the job. Naturally, we also dig into the peculiar food Doug had to eat to gain the trust of a potential asset (i.e. a still-beating snake heart in a shot glass). Later, we cover the extraordinary life story of Peter Ortiz, among other OSS legends. Towards the end, Doug shares the impactful work he’s doing for the James Foley Foundation.Follow Doug at @TexasSpyDad, as well as @ingloriousamateurs (which is a brand that helps educate common folk like the most of us about the world of espionage) on Instagram.
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Tonight’s guest is my friend Jim Webb. Jim is a former war photographer, Marine, and journalist. Jim and I met during his stint working for @blackriflecoffee at @coffeeordiemag. And from there, we hit it off with our shared love for baseball and military history.
Episode 33 features a discussion about Jim’s life story from childhood to present day, including his fondest memories alongside his dad James Webb Sr. — who famously authored Fields of Fire about his time serving as a Marine in the Vietnam War. Jim’s dad later became Secretary of the US Navy and has had an instrumental influence on his life. Jim discusses fishing trips alongside his dad’s Vietnam War buddies and how he continues the family tradition with his Marine teammates. Next, Jim shares what it was like as a war photographer — leaving Penn State early to journey to Afghanistan alongside his dad, ultimately to take a detour on the trip back home to Vietnam to walk the same patrol routes his dad once walked decades before. Ironically, Jim would later join the same exact unit he covered as a war photographer in Afghanistan, except serving as a Marine for a tour in Iraq.
Towards the end of the show, we nerd out on some baseball history, including the iconic Pizza Affair at Fenway Park that’s enshrined in @redsox lore; how @bluemoonbrewco became a ballpark beer; and, how some of baseball’s greatest stars left their prime years behind to fight in war and conflict i.e. Teddy Ballgame, Jerry Coleman, and Ty Cobb.
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Tonight’s guest is Bill Walter — a former Air Force AC-130 gunship Aerial Gunner who has been inducted into both the Air Commando Hall of Fame, as well as the SOCOM Hall of Fame.In this episode we discuss the broad history of the AC-130 gunship, including its involvement in the Vietnam War and then later the many missions in which Bill himself personally has flown between 1978 and 2005. We discuss his experiences from Grenada and Panama to Bosnia and even Mogadishu BEFORE AND AFTER the famous Black Hawk Down saga.
If you’re curious about the history of gunships — this is the episode for you.
If you’re looking for lesser known trivial stuff, we also geek out on some food and drink history — like how Bill’s squadron had a beer machine. All the labels were changed to match an ammunition nickname, like 40 millimeter was Budweiser and so forth. He also has a very comical Halloween candy story that has a wild historical significance that I don’t think can be topped.
Later in the episode, Bill shares how he helped develop the MOAB (Mo-Ab) — The Mother of All Bombs — which was famously used in Afghanistan with devastating effects. So without further ado, here is episode 32 with Bill Walter.Buy Bill's Ghostrider books documenting the history of the AC-130 gunship from 1968-1995.
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Tonight we have a returning guest: former Navy SEAL Kirby Horrell. Kirby first appeared on the podcast back in 2021 (Episode 9) and we covered his early life as well as his combat experiences in the Vietnam War.
This time, Kirby shares his life after Vietnam, including founding several successful business ventures, returning to active-duty to serve a career in the SEAL Teams, and various anecdotes from his time in the teams. These include evacuating US embassies in Africa; developing the MK46 and MK48 machine guns; and living on a boat in Hawaii — which every waterman, including me, envies — using his paddleboard to get to work every morning. Since he was working with the SDVs, he regularly surfed for PT 🏄🏼♂️.
Later in the episode, Kirby shares his involvement with the non-profit Saved In America, which is doing noble work to recover missing or runaway children across the country. Saved In America is a team of former Navy SEALs, former police officers, and private investigators who have safely located more than 250 children (with more than half rescued before being trafficked).
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Tonight’s guest of the Late Night History podcast is Merryl Tengesdal.
Merryl is a trailblazer in the world of aviation as she is, at this time, the only Black woman to ever fly the U-2 “Dragon Lady” spy plane. The U-2 spy plane has conducted high-altitude reconnaissance missions for the US since the 1950s and in the last 10-plus years has achieved a 97% mission success rate. The U-2 is unique in that it requires all pilots to wear specialized pressure suits to fly at altitude — which essentially makes them look more like astronauts than aviators in their single-seat cockpit.
We discuss Merryl’s life story from childhood to present day. Throughout the episode Merryl shares interesting anecdotes throughout her 13 years flying the U-2, including missions, often 8 hours or more, across five combat deployments.
She also tells us about the complicated nature of eating and drinking while in the cockpit. These meals come in toothpaste-like tubes and have some wild flavors like Zapplesauce, which is caffeinated, and even New England Clam Chowda — which as a Massachusetts guy, doesn’t sound too appetizing even for me.
Merryl is the author of her memoir Shatter The Sky and has many additional anecdotes within those pages, including more detail about the humorous story she shares on here about chauffeuring Steven Spielberg to observe a landing of the Dragon Lady for the movie Bridge of Spies.
You can reach out to Merryl by visiting her website: https://merryltengesdal.com/
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Tonight’s guests are Harold Dunnigan and Duncan Smith.Harold was born on Oct. 11, 1930, in Fall River, Massachusetts, and was raised in Santa Monica, California. He enjoyed surfing at Malibu Beach alongside surfing heroes Buzzy Trent, Matt Kivlin, and Peter Cole, then later became Santa Monica Lifeguard. In 1950, he joined the Navy and graduated from UDTR/A class 6 — for you young bucks, that’s BUD/S class 6. Harold would serve during the Korean War with UDT-1 and after the war enrolled in the UDT/SEAL reserve program. He would remain there for many years, including being recalled to active duty as an elderly SEAL during the Gulf War in the 1990s. He used to crush guys in PT and even participated in two water training jumps at the age of 60. Harold is also an avid reader and felt it was important to be well-read. He’s mentored many children and young adults as a school administrator and lifeguard. Some of Harold’s students went on to create the famous Baywatch series as well as the movie Predator.Duncan served more than 30 years in the SEAL Teams before retiring as a captain. Duncan is instrumental in bringing Harold’s story to this podcast as it took much convincing to get Harold to open up about his time in the Navy. While we mostly focus on Harold’s life story, Duncan adds great points throughout the conversation, including discussing an interesting book tradition that’s developed into a prized memento. At the end of the show, Duncan shares his important work with the SEAL Family Foundation and what they do to support SEALs and their families. Here is Episode 29 with Harold Dunnigan and Duncan Smith.
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Tonight’s guest is Ed Loder.
Ed spent 43 years (1970-2013) in the Boston Fire Department, with more than 20 of those years with Rescue Company 1.
Ed is considered the most decorated firefighter in BFD’s history. In this episode, Ed speaks about the realities of the fire service. The stuff that usually doesn’t make the TV shows. Train accidents, plane crashes, deadly scenarios that often don’t have a happy ending.
It’s dark.
It’s raw.
But it’s the truth.
We also discuss some of Ed’s greatest rescues. The saves and attempts that were photographed and made the newspapers. These include rappelling off the roof to save a woman 17 stories up, catching a jumper with only one hand like it was a movie, and sometimes humorously, forgetting to throw on all his gear and racing to a call while wearing Sperrys.
If you want a real look at what it’s like to work as a firefighter during the infamous War Years, this is the episode to listen to.
Ed was on the road when this was made, so bear with us when the audio is wonky at times. All that being said, here is episode 28 with Ed Loder.
P.S.
For those interested, read about some of his rescues and view the famous actions captured by Boston photographers in my article published in 2020: https://coffeeordie.com/boston-firefighter-ed-loder
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Tonight’s guest is with Dick Holm, a former paramilitary officer, operations officer, and station chief with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Dick served 35 years with the CIA under 13 directors and is the recipient of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal — an award given to CIA personnel for extraordinary achievements in service. Dick is also the author of the memoir: The Craft We Chose: My Life in the CIA.
For the most part, we discuss Dick’s extraordinary life while working for the CIA between the 1960s and 1990s. We cover his fascinating work in Laos as a paramilitary officer, then later Dick’s remarkable story of survival after being severely wounded in a plane crash in the Congo. As a result of the crash, Dick was burned over 35% of his body, including his face and hands. He even lost one eye in surgery.
Despite this, Dick would continue to serve at CIA, including critical assignments like running operations into China from Hong Kong, founding the Counter Terrorism Group (known today as the Counter Terrorism Mission Center), and serving multiple station chief positions throughout his career.
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The Late Night History podcast returns in 2023 with Cmdr. Robert “RJ” Thomas. RJ served 32 years in the US Navy (30 of those years within Naval Special Warfare). In this episode we discuss RJ’s life story. It began growing up hunting on his family’s cattle ranch in central California. He had always wanted to become a US Navy frogman, but back in the early 1960s, one had to go to the fleet before arriving at UDT training. Eventually, RJ would pass UDT training and become a frogman. After that, he moved to SEAL Team 2 and deployed to Vietnam. At the time, he was among the best shooters in the Navy. His skills were tested after his helicopter was shot down and he had to defend the crash site with only a M1911 handgun. He would be recommended for the Medal of Honor, however, the award was downgraded to the Navy Cross.Additionally, we also cover the history of Naval Special Warfare through RJ’s eyes. We discussed his tours with UDT-22, his experiences with SEAL Team 2, and later, his career as an officer. Beyond his deployments, RJ is also a distinguished competitive shooter and was instrumental in the development of the SEAL sniper courses as well the .50 caliber sniper rifles, .300 win mags, and other SEAL Team specific gear.This is an episode that you don’t want to miss!
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Tonight’s guest is with Bill Flavin, a retired Army Special Forces colonel with 55 years of experience working for the Department of Defense.
Bill has lived an extraordinary life and has a wealth of experience when it comes to war and peace.
As we do on this show we start chronologically. Bill briefly shares how his famous parents steered him away from life in Hollywood. Bill's mom, Lucile Browne, starred in movies alongside John Wayne, while Bill’s dad, James Flavin, was a character actor. James went to West Point and Bill decided he’d follow that military path too.
We discuss Bill’s extended tour to Vietnam and combat experiences in Cambodia. We also talk about his unique career within Army Special Forces, including leading a team for a program called Project Greenlight. This team operated during the Cold War and, according to Bill, was more of a psychological unit over anything. These Green Berets trained with nuclear weapons and their job was to insert behind enemy lines with mini nukes to take high value targets in the event of World War III.
Thankfully, the nukes were never used.
Towards the end of the show, we discuss Bill’s work with NATO peacekeeping operations. This includes his role in the Balkans hunting PIFWCs in the 90s to flying into Afghanistan with FedEx for on the ground stability assessments in 2002. We close with Bill’s powerful War Peace & Justice Symposium focusing on moral injury.
Learn more about the War Justice Peace Symposium here: https://www.warpeacejustice.org
Follow Late Night History on Instagram: @latenighthistory
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Tonight’s guests are Joe Jackson and Jose Martinez — two friends from One More Wave, a non-profit that I’ve supported since 2018.
Joe is a former US Navy corpsman with 1st Marine Division who completed a combat deployment to Fallujah, Iraq, between 2006 and 2007. Joe discusses his amazing family lineage of military service, his experiences as a corpsman in combat, and how surf therapy has impacted his road to recovery.
Jose is a former US Army soldier who suffered a catastrophic injury after stepping on an IED during a combat deployment to Afghanistan in 2012. At 23-years-old, Jose had to adjust to life as a triple amputee. These days, you can find Jose and Joe competing and winning Gold Medals as a team in para-surf competitions.
As far as history goes, we also dive into the fascinating story of how the Paralympics came to be and how veterans of World War II helped bring the games into fruition. We discuss the history of prosthetic limbs dating back to the American Civil War and Jose provides a modern perspective from his own experiences. Joe also shares some interesting facts about west coast watermen and, in particular, swim fins. Naturally, these topics lead us down many glorious rabbit holes including about the San Diego Bottom Scratchers and frogmen from the Underwater Demolition Teams (predecessors to today's US Navy SEALs).
You can read about the San Diego Bottom Scratchers here: https://freerangeamerican.us/bottom-scratchers/
You can read about the Naked Warriors here: https://www.coffeeordie.com/naked-warrior-navy-seals
Follow Joe Jackson on Instagram: @jojax_85
Follow Jose Martinez on Instagram: @rollwithguru
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Tonight’s guest on the Late Night History podcast is Sierra Brown, a current firefighter at a firehouse in San Diego, California. Sierra has lived quite the adventurous lifestyle from living on a sailboat in Mexico to competing in 100-mile Ultramarathon races to spending several fire seasons as a wildland firefighter.
On this episode, expect to learn the history of the hotshot crews in which Sierra was assigned. The hotshots are considered a national resource and respond to wildfires all around the US. We also talk about how Sierra became a smokejumper at age 38 and some memorable experiences throughout her career.
Later in the episode, we discuss how Sierra has found outside outlets to challenge herself, including her latest ultramarathon called the Man Against Horse Race. Outside of running, Sierra utilized the therapeutic outlet of spearfishing, which you’ll learn all about in this episode. -
Tonight’s guest on the Late Night History podcast is John Wolfram.
John is a former US Navy frogman with two combat tours to Vietnam. In between his tours, John was selected to participate in the famous mission to recover the Apollo 11 astronauts from the ocean after they had just completed the world’s first Moon landing. John shares the stories in great detail.
However, we also talk about other frogman-specific history, including a famous instructor named Vince Olivera. John attended UDTRA — the predecessor name to BUD/S or SEAL training — class 44 and has fond memories of going through training. He remembers Olivera as a tobacco-chewing, cigar-smoking, mean-mugged frogman who had “God” written across his T-shirt. Hear what John had to say about him.Some other highlights include SERE school, wearing blue jeans in ‘Nam, and animals John kept as pets on his combat tours. Of course, to keep with tradition, we discuss the fascinating beer and food John had during the war. Towards the end of the episode, John shares his impactful missionary work returning to Vietnam years after the war ended.
This is an episode that you do not want to miss!
For those interested, I recommend grabbing John’s memoir — Splashdown: The Rescue of a Navy FrogmanAlso checkout John’s YouTube for some cool pictures from his life.
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Tonight's episode of the Late Night History podcast welcomes Remi Adeleke. Remi has lived quite the inspirational life.
We cover his childhood born into Nigerian royalty and how he lost everything and had to move to the Bronx with his mother and start a new life. We discuss how Remi went from hustling in the streets in the Bronx to achieving his dream in becoming a US Navy SEAL. He went from not knowing how to swim to enduring three Navy SEAL Hell Weeks and spending about 8 years at West Coast-based SEAL Teams.
After three combat deployments, Remi transitioned out of the Navy in 2016 and has found success in Hollywood working alongside Transformers director Michael Bay to even producing his own short film called The Unexpected.
The Unexpected will release on Sept. 30, 2022, on Remi's YouTube Channel and is expected to be made into its own featured film. Remi is also the author of the book Transformed: A Navy SEAL's Unlikely Journey From the Throne of Africa, to the Streets of the Bronx, to Defying the Odds.
Follow Remi on IG: @remiadeleke
Follow LNH on IG: @latenighthistory
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On September 11, 2001, Tim Clemente and other FBI agents from the Washington Field Office SWAT team were at Naval Special Warfare Development Group — more widely known as SEAL Team SIX — training in their kill house (also called shoot house). One of Tim's agents alerted him to the developments happening in New York City with early reports indicating a small plane had struck the World Trade Center. Tim's FBI team and several Navy SEALs switched the TV to a live CNN broadcast showing the North Tower on fire. Moments later, the operators watched in horror as the second plane slammed into the WTC's South Tower. Tim tells the remarkable story of responding to the terrorist attacks that day. Along the way, Tim witnessed several small acts of heroism. Following the attacks on 9/11, Tim's team participated in what later became the largest criminal investigation in history.
Read the story here: An FBI Agent's Unforgettable Journey to the Pentagon on 9/11
Listen to Tim Clemente's Audible Original podcast titled After The Fall about the FBI's investigation following 9/11. -
My guest today is Mike Foley, a retired Boston Firefighter with 25 years of experience on the job. Mike is also the author of Busy As Hell and Busy As Hell 2 — books that cover the history of the Boston Fire Department’s War Years between 1963 and 1983.
In this episode we dive into Mike’s family legacy of four generations of Boston Firefighters from his grandfather who was appointed in 1917 to his son who is still serving to this day. Some highlights of the episode include the Foley's Marine Corps heritage, Mike’s very first experience working a fire at 17-years-old, some Boston-specific fire department history, a discussion about bunker gear and cancer, and perhaps my favorite topic — The Liar’s Club.
I first met Mike at the Liar’s Club back in September 2020. The Liar’s Club began in 1968 when a bunch of old retired firefighters would meet for coffee every Wednesday at the training academy on Moon Island in Quincy, Massachusetts. The stories from the glory days would take on a life of their own — tall tales, legends, and sometimes, a few lies. As Mike puts it, “The older we get the better we were when we were younger.”
Pickup Mike's books on Amazon: Busy as Hell: Stories, Tall Tales, Legends, Yarns, and a Cast of Characters from the Boston Fire Department's Famed War Years -
Today’s episode is with Chris Ryan whose name may ring a bell if you’re interested in the history of the British Special Air Service otherwise known as the SAS. These days, Chris stays busy writing novels with storylines and characters based on the SAS. His portfolio contains more than 74 novels, which have been made into popular TV series. But perhaps what he’s most known for is his role with Bravo Two Zero, the fateful British SAS team that was compromised in Iraq in 1991 during the Gulf War. Chris wrote a book from his perspective of how the events transpired called “The One That Got Away,” which describes the longest escape and evasion in British SAS history.
In this episode, we lightly touch on those details. Instead, we cover British SAS history, Chris’s time at the German Alpine Guide’s Course in Germany, and the fascinating application of pink camouflage on the so-called Pink Panther, which were land rovers used by the SAS.Follow Chris Ryan on Twitter: @exsaschrisryan and Instagram: @exsaschrisryan.
Find his books on Amazon.
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My next guest is someone I profiled for a print story published in the summer 2022 limited edition issue of Coffee or Die Magazine. The story inside the magazine is called “The Great Adventure”: Neal McCallum’s 46 Years of Dedicated Service to Uncle Sam.
Some inside baseball for ya, in December 2021, I went to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to cover the 80th anniversary of the attacks. I wrote a couple dispatches and met some interesting people, including former NFL linebacker Donnie Edwards, who played for the Kansas City Chiefs and, at the time, the San Diego Chargers. He now runs Best Defense Foundation where he brings World War II veterans back to their battlefields. Donnie introduced me to Neal.
At the time, I was only privy to Neal’s background as a US Marine having served during the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. But after speaking with him on numerous occasions, I later learned Neal had accomplished far more than I initially perceived.
After World War II, Neal became one of the very first Sky Marshalls in the 1970s in an effort to combat the growing problem of plane hijackings so he helped enforce new anti-piracy laws. We also briefly cover Neal’s 20 years as a criminal investigator for US Customs — you can read about his big cases (which, a link will be in the description) as well as Neal’s government work with the US State Department in the 80s in Russia.
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