Episode 52: Code Talkers, a Con Man, and an Immortal Baby
Madness Madness!
English - April 07, 2022 21:00 - 1 hour - 40.8 MB - ★★★★★ - 38 ratingsTrue Crime Comedy cults scams humor culture history crime Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Today we squint quizzically at James Bernard Schafer, a teleporting doctor who founded the Royal Fraternity of Master Metaphysicians and set out to raise an immortal baby! Until the baby's mother showed up and wanted her back. Still totally immortal, possibly.* We keep going, though, and end up with a look at “the most famous con man you’ve never heard of,” except that if you listen to this podcast you’ve almost certainly heard of him.
Meanwhile, you know what's not a transparently fraudulent Depression-era cash grab? Native American languages. You know what's not a great segue? The previous sentence. Anyway, we also learn about Native American code talkers, who during World Wars I and II saved the lives of a whole entire shitload of American GIs by baffling German and Japanese code breakers with a language that had somehow not made inroads into Hitlerton and Tojo's Gated Community. Naturally the U.S. returned the favor once the war was over by giving Native Americans their land back!
... I'm being told the U.S. did not give Native Americans their land back.
Link! The recently(!) declassified Navajo Code Talker dictionary.