Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, February 4, 1968, a recovery effort is underway to find and get back the USS Pueblo,

a U.S. military cargo and research vessel that was attacked and captured by North Korea a few days earlier. The Pueblo, a U.S. military cargo and research vessel that was attacked and captured by

North Korea a few days earlier. The Pueblo had 83 crew members. One of them was killed in the

initial incident, and then the rest were taking capture, and over the next 11 months, the crew

were held as POWs by North Korea, tortured, an international incident, international tensions growing and

growing and growing. Obviously, we're talking about 1968 here, the Vietnam War and the escalating

Cold War, to have a U.S. ship captured its crew tortured. It's not great. It's not great. But I should

mention one more thing. I said that the U.S USS Pueblo was a military cargo and researched vessel.

It was that, but it was also a spy ship.

It was a spy ship.

And to this day, there are questions and murkiness about whether it had actually entered North Korean waters and precipitated this incident.

But let's talk about the capture of the Pueblo and some of that early 1968 geopolitical context here, as always,

Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody.

Hey there. So I want to talk about this sort of TikTok of how this capture goes down, the POWs get

taken, the reaction at home, the aftermath, but I think we should give a little background on the ship itself and some geopolitical context.

So you're ready for me to like basically sum up the state of the world in 1968 in like 90 seconds?

We'll do it.

I got the clock going.

But look, we have this ship.

The USS Pueblo is originally a World War II ship,

is launched in 1944, as a cargo vessel. It's repurposed in 67, basically as a spy ship,

...