Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, early May 1989, a New York Times story runs that points out that as the Cold War is

thawing more and more American companies are doing business in Russia, sending their products

behind the iron curtain.

And one company is Pepsi, which had actually done that for a long time.

There's a long history of Pepsi showing up in Russia, going back decades.

And over the years, they had accepted a bunch of things in

exchange for those soft drinks not just cash but also vodka and pizza sauce and

according to this New York Times article in exchange for this most recent shipment of Pepsi, the company was given.

17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer. That is right, a naval fleet for a sugary drink a classic swap so let's talk about the time

but Pepsi got its hands and some leftover Russian naval weaponry here always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and

Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there. You Pepsi folks, you Coca-Cola folks, you RC-Cola folks, where do you, where do you come down?

Oh, Coke all the way. I come down hard on Coke Zero and...

Not Coke Zero Zero no.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, I've moved away from Diet Coke into the Coke Zero realm.

And so we have never been a Pepsi household.

But I didn't know that the exchange rate for Pepsi was so high and

exotic. Maybe it's worth doing a switch. I know I used to be a Pepsi fan and

then I switched to Coke and I can't go back and now when I go to restaurants and like sorry all

...