Encore: Presidential Assassinations | Ricochet | 5

American History Tellers

Wondery

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, History, Education For Kids

4.7 • 18.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1981, a gunman fired six shots at Ronald Reagan after the president gave a speech at a Washington D.C. hotel. Over the next several hours, split-second decisions made by Secret Service agents and D.C. hospital staff would determine whether Reagan would live or die. Amidst Cold War tensions, as Reagan lay unconscious in an operating room, questions would emerge over the presidential line of succession and who was actually running the government.

Order your copy of the new American History Tellers book, The Hidden History of the White House, for behind-the-scenes stories of some of the most dramatic events in American history—set right inside the house where it happened.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wunderry Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American history tellers early and
0:05.1	ad free right now. Join Wundery Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's mid-afternoon on Monday, March 30th, 1981.
0:25.0	You're a nurse working in the emergency room of George Washington University Hospital.
0:30.0	And as usual, today has been busy.
0:32.0	You've seen patients suffering everything from strokes to broken bones.
0:36.0	You just finished some intake paperwork
0:38.0	when the charge nurse walked over to your desk a clipboard in hand.
0:42.0	We're open in 5A.
0:43.2	I put Rodriguez in there.
0:45.4	You scan the patient intake list.
0:47.6	Rodriguez, Carlos, Carlos 48, headache, blurred vision,
0:51.8	all right, Room 5A.
0:54.0	As you scribble down some notes, a police officer walks by
0:57.0	and you hear his radio crackled to life.
1:00.0	You can't make out the whole of it,
1:02.0	but you catch something about a shooting at the Washington Hilton.
1:05.0	And before you can ask the officer any more about it, he hustles through the swinging doors and out of the ER.
1:11.0	You look over at the charge nurse. Oh, a shooting at the Hilton, you hear that?
1:16.4	Yep. Let's get a room set up for a trauma patient just in case.
1:20.0	But before you can do anything, you hear a phone ringing and you can't believe where the sound is coming from.
1:27.0	There's a white telephone tucked away in the corner of the nurses station.
1:31.0	It was installed years ago to provide a direct line to the White House.
	...

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