Category: Folklore

Episode 76 Cover Art

ep 76: The Kee Bird, Revisited

The Digression Podcast Guys are taking some much-needed time off, so climb aboard the Wayback Machine as we revisit one of our favorite episodes from the early days: Recovering the Kee Bird (episode #8 from 8/25/2019). In addition to a cleaned-up replay of the original episode, we share some additional news and insight about the…
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Episode 72 Cover Art

ep 72: Voice of the Dogface

Bill Mauldin once said that the infantryman “gives more and gets less than anybody else.” He knew this from his experience on the front lines during the invasion of Sicily and the Allied campaign up the boot of Italy. The talented cartoonist succeeded in ruffling the feathers of the “brass” all the way up to…
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Episode 70 cover art

ep 70: Rommel’s Last Day

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Germany’s widely praised “Desert Fox”, met his end not on the battlefield, but at the hands of henchmen sent by his own commander in chief. After more than 75 years, Rommel’s death remains a testament to the depravity of a regime and a leader who, by the summer of 1944, he…
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Episode 68 Cover Art

ep 68: The Christmas Truce

By December 1914 the reality of trench warfare quickly settled in. Heavy rain soaked both the trenches and the “No Man’s Land” that separated them. For those on the Western Front, daily life was miserable, but it was a misery that was shared by enemies who were, in some places, separated by only 50 yards.…
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Episode 67 Cover Art

ep 67: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

When it comes to the military lexicon, there is a certain language that has many civilians thinking they're listening to a foreign tongue. Well, they are. Not "foreign" as in another nation's language, but foreign as in another culture. Although many military words and expressions do indeed have foreign language roots (the history and etymology…
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Episode 66 Cover Art

ep 66. Operation Pastorius

After declaring war on the United States in 1941, Adolf Hitler was determined to bring the violence of World War II to the United States. His goal was to show that Americans weren't safe within their homeland. His goal was simple: To strike fear in the eyes of American citizens in order to reduce their…
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Episode 64 Cover Art

ep 64: The Maco Light, Revisited

Our schedules got in the way of recording this week, so we're revisiting one of our early episodes. We cleaned up the audio a bit (as best we could given the original Skype recordings) and added the cover art, which we didn't start doing until later episodes. We had a good time with this episode,…
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episode 62 cover art

ep 62: Operation Rype

One could say this episode is a "part 2", of sorts, as it focuses on one of the Jedburgh commandos and an Office of Strategic Services operations supported by The Carpetbaggers, the clandestine flyers we talked about in episode 60. This is the story of Major William Colby and Operation Rype. “Rype” was the codename…
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Episode 60 Cover Art

ep 60: The Carpetbaggers

One of the best-kept secrets of World War II was the CARPETBAGGERS, the code name for a joint OSS-8th Air Force covert ops unit. Assisting French underground groups in the European theater of operations, American Airmen flew agents and supplies to those resistance forces. They flew specially modified, black-painted Consolidated B-24 Liberators, Douglas C-47 Skytrains,…
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Episode 56 Cover Art

ep 56: The Hard Stand Monster, Revisited

Relive or experience for the first time that day The Digression Podcast went live as we revisit our first episode...the story of RAF Alconbury's Hard Stand Monster. This episode kicked off with just a handful of listeners, but it's now a top Google search result. It's also our second most downloaded episode. Looking back, it…
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Episode 54 Cover Art - The Digression Podcast

ep 54: Third Time’s The Charm

This is the story of a young Korean man, Yang Kyongjong, who was pressed into military service for the Japanese army to fight the Russians in Manchuria. Captured by the Russians, he had spent a year in a labor camp when the German invasion of Russia saw him pressed into a Russian army uniform facing…
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ep 52: A-Bombs On The Moon

Detonating a thermonuclear weapon on the moon? It sounds like the devious scheme of a deranged comic-book villain and not a project initiated inside the United States government! But in 1958, as the Cold War space race was heating up, the U.S. Air Force set out to do just that! Code-named "Project A119," it was…
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ep 50: Military Murder Mysteries

Regular listeners of the show know we like strange tales (and alliteration), so for our 50th episode, we thought we'd have a little fun with some military murders that just don't add up. Fair warning! This episode contains some dark humor. So, what caused the untimely deaths of Lt Paul Whipkey, SPC Chad Langford, Lt…
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ep 44: Too L8, They’re Gone

To the mysteries of the sky add the case of the U.S. Navy blimp, L-8. Since the dawn of aviation, aircraft have flown into the clouds never to be seen again. The L-8 disappeared into the clouds all right, but when she reappeared and eventually came back down to earth, she was missing her crew!…
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ep 38: Broken Arrow

Seven and a half hours into their training mission, Major Howard Richardson and his Boeing B-47B Stratojet flight crew finally began to relax after an evening of deploying electronic counter-measures and chaff to evade prowling North American F-86 fighters. The sky was clear and the moon was full. Heading south at 35,000 feet and 495…
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ep 35: White Feather

He's the most famous sniper you’ve probably never heard of. Marine Gunnery Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock II was a Marine Scout Sniper who served two tours in Vietnam, first in 1966, and returning in 1969. Until the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq he held the record for the most confirmed kills in the United States…
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ep 31: Military Murder

What drives military members to murder? Maybe it's the violent nature of the work; or some childhood trauma; or a psychological disorder; or maybe they're just bad people. Maybe it's all of these things or a combination or none of them. The truth is we often don't know what compels someone to kill. If you're…
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ep 27: Snooze You Loose

Most of you have probably heard of Antonio López de Santa Anna, the self-proclaimed "Napoleon of the West," and the story of the Alamo. What you probably haven't heard is how, just a few months after the Alamo, Santa Anna parked his army directly next to Sam Houston's much smaller American force by the San…
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ep 25: To Boldly Digress

The Amazing 25th Episode Podcast Spectacular! Of course, it's really no different than our regular episodes...okay, so it's a regular episode, but it's special because it's number 25--a podcast milestone! To celebrate #25, we talk about the origin of The Digression Podcast on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. And, as…
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ep 12: Giant Voice

This is the story of Chris, who takes a job hauling a mobile long-range acoustic device from Florida to San Diego which results in a spiraling digression into the hilarious deficiencies of the giant voice system at Kunsan AB, Republic of Korea, with a few stops along the way prompted by a snake, a couple…
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e10 Haunted Military

ep 10: Haunted Military

Halloween is fast approaching and what better topic for this month's podcast than The Top 10 Most Haunted Military Sites? Our military serves to project power around the globe and the men and women who serve are often thrust into dangerous and violent situations. Needless to say, the stress endured by these soldiers, sailors, airmen,…
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ep 8: Recovering the Kee Bird

In 1947, a US Army Air Forces B-29 Superfortress, dubbed the Kee Bird, crash-landed on a frozen lake in Northern Greenland. The crew was rescued, but the Air Force abandoned the aircraft and struck it from its inventory. And there it remained, untouched, for forty-seven years until a small team of aircraft recovery specialists attempted…
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ep 6: Darwin Awards

In this podcast, we share some personal stories and lessons learned from the Darwin Award-worthy antics we observed throughout our military careers. Things like, benzocaine burns your eye; never park in front of a loaded F-16; jet intakes suck…A LOT; the GEICO squirrels are REAL; what goes up must come down; and evidently, there’s a…
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ep 4: I AM THE IG!

In this podcast, Jody and Chris talk about their experiences with the Air Force Inspector General. In sharing their IG insights, they find an F-4 in the ceiling, look for the “War Wagon”, learn why the amnesty box is never a good idea, dig into jet skies on the flight line, explore when an ambulance…
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ep 3: The Maco Light and Other Ghost Stories

A hundred years and a thousand storytellers have blurred the legend of the Maco Light and we’re not going to make it any clearer. Joe Baldwin was a brakeman and was traveling in the caboose of an Atlantic Coast Line train through the little town of Maco, North Carolina, when all of a sudden it…
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