CLASSIC: How Big Bill Speakman Fought Off North Korea With Beer Bottles
Ridiculous History
iHeartPodcasts
4.2 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week's Classic episode: Bill Speakman, better known as the “Beer Bottle VC”, single-handedly took on a brigade of Chinese People’s Army Infantry in four hours of close-quarters combat. As he ran out of actual weapons, he began throwing beer bottles -- and, somehow, survived. Tune in to learn more about Big Bill Speakman, the Beer Bottle VC (and learn why he came to hate this nickname).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | fellow ridiculous historians, we are returning to you just all Twitter-painted to tell you |
| 0:06.4 | a weird story about a long-time obsession. |
| 0:10.6 | You guys remember the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, DPRK or North Korea? |
| 0:16.0 | How could I forget? |
| 0:17.5 | Those upstarts, those scamps? |
| 0:20.0 | Right. |
| 0:21.3 | Yeah, yeah. |
| 0:22.2 | The Kim Dynasty is a continuing force in the world today. |
| 0:29.0 | And there have been a lot of terrifying, very strange situations. |
| 0:34.9 | There's a lot of ridiculous history to the DPRK or North Korea, but this week's |
| 0:40.8 | classic episode concerns a guy named Bill Speakman, spelled like it sounds, who got into a situation |
| 0:52.0 | in North Korea and had to throw beer at people or beer bottles, empty bottles. |
| 1:00.4 | Like you do. |
| 1:01.5 | Is that what you do? |
| 1:02.5 | Yeah, man. |
| 1:03.9 | Someone displeases me? |
| 1:05.6 | You throw an empty beer bottle? |
| 1:07.4 | Absolutely. |
| 1:08.1 | Sometimes I smash it and then brandish the broken end at them. |
| 1:11.2 | You don't even drink beer. Where are you getting all these bottles? What are you talking about? |
| 1:14.2 | I like beer. I'll have a beer. I'll down a beer with the boys at the pub of a night out. |
| 1:21.2 | And so this guy, Bill Speakman, as, you know what, I don't even want to spoil it. Let's just roll the tape. |
... |
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