*BONUS* Strange And Unexplained- That Time Democracy Almost Collapsed: The Forgotten History of Smedley Butler and the Plot to Overthrow FDR
Crimes of the Centuries
Amber Hunt and Audioboom
4.6 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the 1930s, some shadowy figures approached a decorated and beloved Marine with a plot to overthrow the government and replace FDR with someone much more friendly to the wealthy. If only they hadn't chosen Smedley Butler to do their bidding, we might be living in a very different world today.
"Strange and Unexplained" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab & Three Goose Entertainment and is a journey into the uncomfortable and the unknowable that will leave you both laughing and sleeping with the lights on. You can get early and ad-free episodes on the Grab Bag Patreon page.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. I'm off this week for spring break, but I recently helped edit this episode of Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Egan, and I think it's right up our alley. It's got history, it's got crime, it's got all the components you need to make a great case to cover for crimes of the centuries, so I hope you enjoy it. I'll be back next week with my own investigation. |
| 0:21.5 | Thanks so much. |
| 0:27.2 | How far would you go to stand up for what's right? |
| 0:31.4 | Would you risk your career, your reputation, your life? |
| 0:38.3 | Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. |
| 0:41.7 | I'm not a big pro-military kind of person. |
| 0:44.9 | I know there are myriad reasons people join, but if the reasoning is the nebulous idea of |
| 0:49.9 | patriotism, we're probably not going to be on the same page. |
| 0:56.6 | To be clear, that doesn't mean I don't support the troops. I just prefer not to support the system the troops are trooping for, if you know what I |
| 1:03.3 | mean. But I am really into redemption arcs. If someone joined the military thinking they would be |
| 1:09.6 | upholding freedom, but then learned their role was actually to uphold an economic system that favored the rich, and then they did whatever they could to undo the damage they'd caused, well, I might just offer to buy that person a drink. |
| 1:46.3 | Smedley Darlington Butler. Now there's a name for the history books, except I didn't learn about him in school, and I'm going to bet you didn't either. Because I'd have remembered a name like that, |
| 1:51.6 | he was a real hero, a Marine Major General and a two-time Medal of Honor winner, and in the |
| 1:57.5 | 1930s he probably thwarted a White House coup that could have undermined democracy |
| 2:02.8 | and replaced it with a fascist military for the good of the millionaires. |
| 2:07.4 | I know what you're thinking. Daisy's trying to draw some wicked political point |
| 2:11.2 | to score a small victory on the people now in charge. |
| 2:14.3 | I am not. I am just going to explain how something really shocking happened in the early |
| 2:20.0 | 1930s, something that nobody told me about, and something for which nobody got punished, |
| 2:26.6 | something that had treason and banana republic written all over it, something that nearly |
| 2:31.6 | undermined Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal before most of the public programs that saved us ever got underway. |
| 2:39.2 | It is something that is debated to this day among historians, but I guess not trusted to the rest of us because nobody sees fit to put it in history books. |
... |
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