I'm Alan Olga and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating. This was in 1939 and it was in November and Hitler was scheduled to give this speech.

Several months earlier,

somebody who wanted to assassinate Hitler

had planted a bomb in one of the pillars

right next to where Hitler was going to be speaking.

Now Hitler, on that day, normally would have. Hitler was

about two hours long.

Well, what happened was he decided to start early

and he decided to shorten the speech. He left the hall around 9 o'clock and at 9 12

the bomb exploded killing like 60 people Hitler would have absolutely been killed.

The history of World War II and the Holocaust would have been much, much different.

But it was only because of chance that he wasn't killed.

And then on his way back to Berlin,

there was a train stop in Nuremberg.

And he was told about the bomb.

And he said, a man has to be lucky.

Well, he was lucky, but we were really unlucky.

That's Mark Rank.

And that's just one dramatic example in his new book, The Random Factor, of how chance can change not only lives, but history too.

It probably affects all of us in one way or another.

So it didn't take long before Mark and I were comparing stories of how

chance had affected our own lives.

...