2026-02-27
19 分钟When Johann Raul received the letter on Christmas Day 1776, he put it away to read later.
Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside.
But what it actually was, was a warning, delivered to the Hessian Colonel,
letting him know that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack his forces.
The next day,
when Raul lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls,
the letter was found.
Unopened in his vest pocket.
As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there.
Oh well, this is The Constant, a history of getting things wrong.
I'm Mark Chrysler.
Every episode we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world.
Find us at ConstantPodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
It's now four years since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Many people thought that Ukraine would not be able to withstand the might of Russia,
which of course is so much bigger, so much more resources than Ukraine.
But of course Ukraine has survived, it fights on.
This is now the deadliest war since World War II,
but it's a different kind of war to any we've ever seen.
because it's being fought by drones and often controlled by AI.