Late Night History

Tonight we have a returning guest: former Navy SEAL Kirby Horrell. Kirby first appeared on the podcast back in 2021 ( Episode 9 ) and we covered his early life as well as his combat experiences in the Vietnam War. This time, Kirby shares his life after Vietnam, including founding several successful business ventures, returning to active-duty to serve a career in the SEAL Teams, and various anecdot...

Tonight’s guest of the Late Night History podcast is Merryl Tengesdal. Merryl is a trailblazer in the world of aviation as she is, at this time, the only Black woman to ever fly the U-2 “Dragon Lady” spy plane. The U-2 spy plane has conducted high-altitude reconnaissance missions for the US since the 1950s and in the last 10-plus years has achieved a 97% mission success rate. The U-2 is unique in...

Tonight’s guests are Harold Dunnigan and Duncan Smith. Harold was born on Oct. 11, 1930, in Fall River, Massachusetts, and was raised in Santa Monica, California. He enjoyed surfing at Malibu Beach alongside surfing heroes Buzzy Trent, Matt Kivlin, and Peter Cole, then later became Santa Monica Lifeguard. In 1950, he joined the Navy and graduated from UDTR/A class 6 — for you young bucks, that’s B...

Tonight’s guest is Ed Loder. Ed spent 43 years (1970-2013) in the Boston Fire Department, with more than 20 of those years with Rescue Company 1.  Ed is considered the most decorated firefighter in BFD’s history. In this episode, Ed speaks about the realities of the fire service. The stuff that usually doesn’t make the TV shows. Train accidents, plane crashes, deadly scenarios that often don’t hav...

Tonight’s guest is with Dick Holm, a former paramilitary officer, operations officer, and station chief with the Central Intelligence Agency.  Dick served 35 years with the CIA under 13 directors and is the recipient of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal — an award given to CIA personnel for extraordinary achievements in service. Dick is also the author of the memoir: The Craft We Chose: My Life...

The Late Night History podcast returns in 2023 with Cmdr. Robert “RJ” Thomas. RJ served 32 years in the US Navy (30 of those years within Naval Special Warfare).  In this episode we discuss RJ’s life story. It began growing up hunting on his family’s cattle ranch in central California. He had always wanted to become a US Navy frogman, but back in the early 1960s, one had to go to the fleet before...

Tonight’s guest is with Bill Flavin, a retired Army Special Forces colonel with 55 years of experience working for the Department of Defense. Bill has lived an extraordinary life and has a wealth of experience when it comes to war and peace. As we do on this show we start chronologically. Bill briefly shares how his famous parents steered him away from life in Hollywood. Bill's mom, Lucile Browne...

Tonight’s guests are Joe Jackson and Jose Martinez — two friends from One More Wave, a non-profit that I’ve supported since 2018. Joe is a former US Navy corpsman with 1st Marine Division who completed a combat deployment to Fallujah, Iraq, between 2006 and 2007. Joe discusses his amazing family lineage of military service, his experiences as a corpsman in combat, and how surf therapy has impacted...

Tonight’s guest on the Late Night History podcast is Sierra Brown, a current firefighter at a firehouse in San Diego, California. Sierra has lived quite the adventurous lifestyle from living on a sailboat in Mexico to competing in 100-mile Ultramarathon races to spending several fire seasons as a wildland firefighter. On this episode, expect to learn the history of the hotshot crews in which Sierr...

Tonight’s guest on the Late Night History podcast is John Wolfram. John is a former US Navy frogman with two combat tours to Vietnam. In between his tours, John was selected to participate in the famous mission to recover the Apollo 11 astronauts from the ocean after they had just completed the world’s first Moon landing. John shares the stories in great detail. However, we also talk about other f...

Tonight's episode of the Late Night History podcast welcomes Remi Adeleke. Remi has lived quite the inspirational life. We cover his childhood born into Nigerian royalty and how he lost everything and had to move to the Bronx with his mother and start a new life. We discuss how Remi went from hustling in the streets in the Bronx to achieving his dream in becoming a US Navy SEAL. He went from not k...

On September 11, 2001, Tim Clemente and other FBI agents from the Washington Field Office SWAT team were at Naval Special Warfare Development Group — more widely known as SEAL Team SIX — training in their kill house (also called shoot house). One of Tim's agents alerted him to the developments happening in New York City with early reports indicating a small plane had struck the World Trade Cen...

My guest today is Mike Foley, a retired Boston Firefighter with 25 years of experience on the job. Mike is also the author of Busy As Hell and Busy As Hell 2 — books that cover the history of the Boston Fire Department’s War Years between 1963 and 1983. In this episode we dive into Mike’s family legacy of four generations of Boston Firefighters from his grandfather who was appointed in 1917 to his...

Today’s episode is with Chris Ryan whose name may ring a bell if you’re interested in the history of the British Special Air Service otherwise known as the SAS. These days, Chris stays busy writing novels with storylines and characters based on the SAS. His portfolio contains more than 74 novels, which have been made into popular TV series. But perhaps what he’s most known for is his role with Bra...

My next guest is someone I profiled for a print story published in the summer 2022 limited edition issue of Coffee or Die Magazine. The story inside the magazine is called “The Great Adventure”: Neal McCallum’s 46 Years of Dedicated Service to Uncle Sam . Some inside baseball for ya, in December 2021, I went to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to cover the 80th anniversary of the attacks. I wrote a couple di...

Phil Marshall is the author of 18 and counting books about the history and heroism of Dustoff huey pilots in the Vietnam War. He is also a Dustoff pilot himself who was wounded during a daring nighttime mission sent to rescue three seriously wounded Americans.  Dustoff was the callsign for the green Huey helicopters with the Red Cross often painted on the nose or the side of the aircraft to s...

This episode is pretty remarkable. I interviewed author and publisher, Mick Prodger, alongside Vito Cellini — who has lived a TV-series-worthy life. Vito was born in New York City and raised in Italy. He became street tough as a gangster by the time World War II kicked off and was conscripted into the Italian Army. Upon learning the Italians would fight against the Americans, Vito had deserted, an...

Episode 14 of the Late Night History podcast, your host Matt Fratus interviews former Navy SEAL officer Jim Hawes. About a year and some change ago, I interviewed Jim while he was in Botswana on business. The connection was spotty at best, so we re-recorded this episode here and mostly discuss Jim's career where he had a cup of coffee at SEAL Team 2 before he took an assignment with MACV-SOG d...

In May 2003, Brendan Whittington-Jones, a South African game reservist, joined other volunteers in Iraq to rescue stranded wild animals at the Baghdad Zoo. In the middle of the Iraq War and without any zoo experience, Brendan spent more than a year rehabilitating malnourished tigers, conducting rescue missions around the city to save bears and horses, and even took care of the lions belonging to S...

Episode 12 of the Late Night History podcast welcomes a true living legend: Bob Charest. Bob Charest is a distinguished member of the US Army Special Forces Regiment aka the Green Beret Hall of Fame. Charest served in the US Army between 1956 and 1981 and completed two tours during the Vietnam War; the first with Army Special Forces and the second with MACV-SOG. He ran Recon and Hatchet Teams. Rec...

Late Night History podcast returns with a brand new episode with former Navy SEAL and ice cream mad scientist Chris Fettes. We discuss what it was like bringing a fancy ice cream machine on combat deployments to make ice cream for his teammates in his hooch at various hot spots around the world including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. We also dive into the intersection between ice cream and milit...

Joe Downey, a 36-year firefighter and battalion chief of FDNY's Rescue Battalion in Special Operations Command, joins episode 10 of the Late Night History podcast to discuss the legacy of his father, Ray Downey, a former Marine and one of the most decorated firemen in FDNY history. Ray Downey was a founding father and national representative for 28 Task Forces of the Urban Search and Rescue pr...

Kirby Horrell joins the podcast to discuss his 47 year career in the US Navy (1967-1975 active-duty, 1975-1990 reserves, 1990-2014 active-duty). We did this interview outside on a park bench in Coronado, California. The outside noises of wind, voices, and birds can be heard, but don't let this distract from the interview where Kirby discusses his life and exciting tour to Vietnam as a Navy SEA...

Retired SGM Mike Vining joins the show to discuss his legendary career as an EOD Vietnam veteran, graduate of the US Army Delta Force's first Operator Training Course (OTC-1), and his role as a master breacher, operator, and consultant for JSOC.  This episode explores his experience working with the US Secret Service and the tragedy that followed. Mike shares some of the historic operations h...

Ben Garwood joins the show to discuss his career within elite units of the British military including the Parachute Regiment, the Pathfinders, the REME, and the Special Air Service, otherwise known as the SAS. We dive into the history of these units and discuss how assessment and selection for the SAS served as a blueprint for US special missions units and allied nations. Ben even shares an awesom...