The General’s Gambit: George Washington and the Unseen Enemy of the American Revolution

Before there was a president, there was a pox.

In this shockingly funny and seductively smart episode, the R-Naughty roundtable reveals how George Washington saved the American Revolution—not with muskets, but with medicine.

Faced with a smallpox epidemic that was wiping out soldiers faster than British bullets, Washington made a radical move: he ordered the mass inoculation of the Continental Army. It was bold. It was illegal. And it worked.

Join narrator Mira Tell and our panel of dangerously qualified experts as they unmask:

• Washington’s personal brush with smallpox in Barbados
• The failed Canadian campaign, where contagion trumped combat
• The birth of American immunity policy in a Morristown snowstorm
• The Pustule-to-Patriot Pipeline (you’ll never look at scars the same)
• Why pus might’ve mattered more than powdered wigs

Complete with letters, lawbreaking, and one very sharp lancet—The General’s Gambit is a wild ride through the sexiest public health decision in U.S. history.

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